In their quest to destroy everything good and green, Trump and his sycophants — as one commentor I saw put it, the ‘pack of unsharpened crayons’ — are tearing apart environmental regulations in the U.S.

The attacks range from assaults on the Endangered Species Act to giving the space industry carte blanche to do whatever they like regardless of regulatory guidelines for the environment.

They don’t care about anything but making a profit, and that includes the air we breathe, the land we stand on, and the animals we share the world with.

Don’t get me started on the water. Y’all know I have beef about that.

At this point, beyond just the usual profit motive, it’s starting to feel intentional.

These assholes took one look at dystopian novels like the Hunger Games and the Handmaid’s Tale and mistook them for fucking instruction manuals.

It’s no accident that all of our big, well-known dystopian fictions include extreme environmental destruction alongside the usual political upheavel and oppression. The ‘world that was’ before everything went to hell.

Yes, even the Hunger Games. Panem is the only country mentioned because it’s believed to be the only country left, following nuclear wars and out-of-control Climate Change. Handmaid’s Tale includes it as well, with the ‘unwomen’ being sent to clean up irradiated toxic wastelands that surround Gilead as a punishment.

It’s a consistent pattern. Ecological damage is part of the collapse.

Maybe these guys are just ignorant twatwaffles who believe that climate change is a hoax and that there are no consequences for what they do. Maybe they think their money gives them special powers of protection.

Maybe they think they’ll be dead before consequences touch them.

Who knows?

What I know is that I like being able to breathe. I love seeing green outside my window, having water to drink and good, healthy food to eat. I like hearing the birds singing outside and watching wildlife poking around my garden.

I love squirrels, even when they’re eating my lettuce.

Every regulation is written in blood. Someone did something stupid, bad things happened, and somebody decided to make a rule to stop it from happening again.

Taking away those regulations takes away the guardrails.

It just gets worse from here, unless they’re stopped.

Solidarity wins.

We have a bunch of new arrivals here at World-Weary!

Come on in, folks. Cookies and cinnamon rolls are on your left, tea, coffee and water are on the right. Pick your poison of choice and settle in.

Kick off your shoes, let your hair down, put your feet up and grab a comfy blanket of your choosing. It’s time for a little community check in.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a little meeting, hasn’t it? A lot has gone on in the world, a lot of problems exposed, a lot of daily life is getting worse, more expensive and more dangerous.

For some of us, mental health is lower than ever.

If that’s the case for you, I want to know. It’s time to vent.

I personally got news for my health that necessitated a complete lifestyle change, and I’m still fighting with immigration over my spouse. Hopefully that fight will be over soon, but I’ve been saying that for months.

I’m feeling very emotionally tired. I’m not going to let it tear me away from my work here.

That’s my bit of oversharing for the day; I’m weary.

How about you? What’s eating at you? What’s grinding you down? Let’s talk about it in the comments if you feel comfortable with it; I’d love to see this community step in to offer each other a virtual shoulder to lean on.

We’re all tired here at World-Weary. But we’re here because we care.

Solidarity wins.

Having a nice day? I hope so. I’m getting ready for work and being generally annoyed at having to leave my house today; I’m not feeling too well, but alas, the store needs somebody standing at the cash.

Retail is fun that way.

At least where I live the heat has faded somewhat, and for the moment our air is relatively clear. Not so where my spo…

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We’ve been talking a lot about the global water crisis lately.

Whether it be aridification in the western States in the U.S., the massive drought that hit my country last summer, rising ocean temperatures, or severe water scarcity on the African continent, everywhere you look there is a water issue.

Mexico struggles with freshwater; India’s drinking water crisis is well known, and most of us know all about the issues with obtaining clean water in Gaza while it’s under siege. It goes without saying that in warzones like Ukraine and South Sudan, access to safe water is outrageously difficult to find.

And then you bring in climate change, and it all gets worse.

Rivers are drying up, flooding is smashing records where it never happened before, and whole regions are having to completely revamp their local infrastructure to meet changing needs.

People are desperate for answers. I wish I could give easy, practical solutions to these issues that would be implemented quickly and painlessly, and solve our problems so that this all can stop.

People crave simplicity. They want to be able to brush these problems away and get back to living life in peace.

I wish I could give them that. But I can’t. Nobody can. Because the truth is, this is a complicated problem with many moving parts, and it’s going to take a monumental restructuring of our entire system to get caught up — let alone halt progress and reverse the damage.

There is no magic bullet solution to the climate crisis. No simple, easy answers, no one-stop-shop method of preserving our way of life.

The good news is, we know how to fix it.

The bad news is we aren’t doing it because profit and convenience are in the way.

Let me talk about the title of this piece for a second, because the topic of desalination is what inspired this whole rant.

Desalination is the process of pulling salt out of salt water — usually sourced from the ocean in some form or another. Desalination plants draw in the sea, filter out the salts, organic matter and toxic chemical contamination through reverse osmosis and filtration, and provide clean water that becomes available for people to use.

Now, in theory, this sounds awesome. I saw someone suggest it in the comments on one of my articles a while back as a possible solution to aridification in the American Midwest; desalinated seawater could be shipped in from the coast to help meet the shortfall.

It’s already heavily used in the Middle East to provide drinking water to millions of people in arid regions with little rainfall.

On paper, great. Desalination plants sound awesome. They provide clean water from a readily available source; after all, our planet’s surface is like 70% ocean!

But in practice, the process is absolutely not sustainable for the rest of the globe.

The thing with removing salt from seawater is that the salt does not disappear. It has to go somewhere. You have a ton of leftover heavily concentrated brine that needs to be disposed of.

Where does it go?

Well, unfortunately, it often goes right back into the ocean.

Salt levels in the ocean are not easily sorted out, as it turns out; heavy salt sinks, and it leads to the water near the sea floor being heavily contaminated and difficult for oxygen to penetrate.

This is bad news for the plants that depend on oxygenated water, and even worse news for the fish, which have adapted to a far lesser volume of salt. You screw up the balance, and you wind up poisoning the entire ecosystem.

The marine wildlife quite literally suffocates.

Now, depending on where the plant is situated, there might be strict environmental rules about dilution and distribution of that brine to help prevent an imbalance of salt in the ocean.

Might be. That depends on the laws and regulations where the plant was built. And it also depends on how legally conscious the owners and operators of the plants are.

After all, we’ve talked about the infamous Hanford Site before. The operators of the nuclear plant were well aware of the dangers of nuclear radiation, but they fell back on extremely unsafe practices and disposal methods anyway because it was cheaper and more convenient.

Their negligence not only cost workers the comfort of a long, healthy life, but they’ve rendered swathes of Washington state toxic and left the government scrambling with a cover-up.

If you think these plants are following all of the rules just because the rules are on paper, I have a lovely pond to sell you in the Sahara.

As long as the penalty for breaking the law is cheaper than the money you lose in following it, corporations will consider legal defence fees to be the smarter business decision.

In the eyes of the owner class, money is greener than ethics.

Desalination is not the only silver bullet proposal for the water crisis.

There’s also evaporation, solar capture, mist-harvesting and rain collection — all methods of what’s called atmospheric water harvesting.

These have their own problems. But the biggest one shared by all is that these are not solutions; they are stop-gap measures. Methods of providing water in the short term as the crisis continues to get worse.

There is no magic solution. The issue is climate change.

That’s our fight.

The thing with climate change is that we know exactly what’s causing it. We know the impact of fossil fuels and how they affect the atmosphere. We know about the tipping points that fuel global weather instability and warming. We know that it’s our overreliance on electricity use and convenience that causes this mess.

It’s the corporations pouring billions of tons of harmful gases into the air, pouring toxins into the water, and dumping oil into the oceans. It’s the millions of tons of plastic waste in landfills full of perfectly edible food left to rot, because it doesn’t look pretty enough for grocery market shelves.

It’s the industries that destroy forests, logging as if we have immeasurable abundance, clearing farmland for cattle and monocrop farms.

It’s the constant one-day shipping and never-ending stream of cars that clog the roads, necessitating more land used for tarmac and asphalt and parking lots.

And we know how that goes, don’t we?

We know how to fix climate change and start to reverse it. But it means that many of the conveniences and luxuries we’ve grown used to need to stop.

We need to drastically cut back on fossil fuels — eradicate them if necessary. We need to find methods of carbon capture, restoring forests and ecosystems and grasslands that effectively work as sinks.

We need to stop producing so much waste, stop putting corporate profits above the needs of citizens and quit throwing away perfectly usable foods to rot and contribute to landfills that don’t need to exist.

We need to go back to reusing instead of throwing away.

One-day shipping needs to stop. Public transportation needs to replace cars as much as possible. Our extravagant energy use needs to roll back to reasonable levels, not just at the individual level but at the level of industry.

We need to stop polluting and start working to solve the crisis. We need to take it as seriously as we took the Pandemic.

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Because we all know how that went.

Millions of people were told they needed to stay at home and mask up to save other people’s lives, and millions of people said ‘fuck no.’

It pricked their convenience. It pricked their personal enjoyment. They wanted haircuts, restaurants, to go see movies and be with their friends — no matter what it did to anyone else, they got theirs.

Imagine telling them they had to cut down on power consumption entirely. In a world where Netflix and computer games are the only source of enjoyment for so many people, can you imagine if regulations tried to cut back?

Can you imagine taking those gigantic trucks off the road and telling Joe Buddy he can’t drive his Hummer anymore?

Can you imagine telling these people that they can’t have plastic bags at the grocery store? We did that in Canada, and they still bitch about it years later. The fuss people make over plastic straws is insane.

Imagine telling them they can’t have same-day delivery anymore because there’s a limit to how much a corporation can pollute per day and they repeatedly hit their quotas too quickly, so they have to find an alternate method of shipping. They already scream about carbon taxes at the gas pump.

Trains would come back, but holy shit these people would lose their goddamn minds!

They won’t go backwards in lifestyle. And it’d cut into corporate profits to force them to, so they won’t.

So we’re left hunting for other solutions, ones that won’t affect people’s happiness or lives in measurable ways. It’s hard to find, and I don’t know if we’ll do it quickly enough.

There’s no magic bullet to solve the climate crisis. So here we are. And it only gets worse from here.

Solidarity wins.

It’s 2026, and Republicans still haven’t figured out how the weather works.

Last year during the worst of Canada’s fire season, when we were living in terror of shifting winds during a nightmarish drought that left us extremely vulnerable, the right-wing lawmakers in the U.S. were already whining.

“This smoke is ruining my vacation!”

“I can’t walk my dog without coughing!”

“Canada keeps lighting fires, they’re so mean to us!”

And this year, they’re back at it again.

They’re threatening to tariff us again. They’re complaining about their vacations being ruined. They’re sneering at us for being bad at ‘forest management’ and threatening to ‘take over’ our fire efforts.

As in, threatening to take over our country as if they’d be able to do any better.

They don’t even know how the wind works, how are they going to fight fires?

Meanwhile, Canadians are fighting for our lives. Building fire breaks around residential areas, beating back racing wildfires started by lightning in dry brush. Flying water bombers over distant forests to wet them down and try to control the spread.

And while we’re at it, helping Americans with their own fire problems. We just lost a firefighter pilot in the U.S. last week; he died helping over the border. We always show up to help you guys when needed. Always.

But your Republicans? Bitching and moaning and whining like babies, accusing us of arson and being irresponsible.

Fuck. You.

You know what? I hope they choke on that smoke. I hope it lingers. I wish it would leave ordinary citizens alone, of course, but those asshole Republicans deserve every cough that comes out of their lungs.

People are dying. People are losing everything. Parents are fleeing their homes as they’re consumed in flame, cradling their screaming children and pets and trying not to think of all the keepsakes and important items they’ve just lost.

Memories, documents, an entire life gone up in smoke.

Towns and reservations wiped off the fucking map, leaving refugees scrambling every which way.

That’s what life is like for us. You think we aren’t choking on the smoke? It’s literally changing the expected weather patterns across the country, fucking with our weather forecasts and filling the air with haze.

We’re constantly checking fire maps, praying that we don’t see anything near our homes, thinking about having to go to work at a time like this and hoping against hope that our houses will still be standing when we come back.

Fuck your vacation. I’m busy trying to keep my life.

Solidarity wins.

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Anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment is on the rise all around the world.

Every now and then though, we see a small bright spot in the mess of roiling darkness that is the march against progress. Today, that bright spot is Botswana.

On the African continent, there are few countries that grant protections to LGBTQ+ people. Due to colonial era laws and fundamentalist religious cultures, many people across the nations of Africa view gay and trans people with particular disgust.

It’s to the point where countries like Uganda even have the death penalty on the books for ‘repeat offenders.’ Many others are doubling down on legislative hate.

But Botswana is moving in the opposite direction. They’re increasing their protections for same-sex couples and intimacy, and the people impacted by this are pushing for one step futher.

There is now a fight in Botswana to legalize gay marriage.

Now, that fight has opponants. The same opponants found across the rest of the continent, and most other countries in the world — the religious fundies and the bigots who see gay rights as ‘an attack on the culture of our country.’

You know the type.

Still, this is a fight worth watching and spreading the word about. Public pressure works, and winning smaller battles helps weaken the enemy’s position.

So, please; help me spread this far and wide. Gay marriage advocates in Botswana need our support, and so do the activists across the rest of Africa. Those in Niger, Uganda and Ghana who are facing an uphill battle for acceptance in cultures rapidly deteriorating into mobs of loathing.

If you want to help more directly, there are numerous charities across Africa which provide support for LGBTQ+ people facing discrimination and oppression. I would suggest the African Human Rights Coalition is a good place to start if you’re looking to donate; they provide a lot of assistance for people displaced by hate.

But even making an effort to inform others about this is a good, helpful move. Spread the word on social media, tell your friends and family, and do your best to provide open support for gay marriage worldwide.

No matter where you live, that Overton Window needs a good stiff shove in the right direction. The internet makes borders a lot less meaningful when it comes to misinformation and hate.

But it also means the opposite; our voices spread a lot further than we think.

Solidarity wins.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. We worship wealth.

Poverty is so often regarded as a failing of morality or work ethic, an issue of personal responsibility. In some cases that may be true, but in a system where the value ascribed to your life is based on numbers in bank accounts, it’s hard to claw your way out of a hole.

The higher the cost of living goes, the more of that precious money drains away from you due to circumstances largely outside of your control. You need to eat. You need gas for your car — assuming you even own one. You need to pay rent, you need medicine and care, you need some form of enjoyment in life.

And no, I don’t consider recreational activities to be something you can just ‘do without.’ What’s the point of living if you have to restrict enjoyment for most of your life just for the hope of living well when you’re old?

Most of us in my generation and younger have no hope of retirement. When exactly are we supposed to experience joy, guys? I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. I’m not going to waste the time I have just slaving away making someone else more money than they pay me for my time, and you shouldn’t expect that of people.

I think people have the right to live, not just scrape a bare meagre survival on scraps.

Since it’s so far out of most of our collective grasp, we tend to fantasize about what life would be like with a world-altering amount of money. I’ve spent plenty of time thinking about how it would feel to pay off all of mine and my spouse’s debts and to have enough money to settle in a house of our own.

People like to say that money doesn’t buy happiness, but it damn sure removes a lot of the obstacles to achieving a good and joyful life. I’d be happier if I never had to worry about paying the bills, and I’m sure you would be, too.

We’d all love to have the total freedom that wealth would bring. The power to truly do whatever you want to do, whatever that is.

The truth of what we’d do tends to reveal a lot about who we are as people. And for people who do have that kind of wealth, there’s no shortage of evidence.

The picture that evidence paints isn’t good.

Money is power in our society. And power reveals a lot about who we are.

What we do with it tells you everything you need to know.

Take Elon Musk for example. In 2021, he famously said that if he were given a plan to end world hunger, he would pay for it. He had more than enough money, he could do it in a snap if someone told him how. He swore up and down he would sell his Tesla stock and donate the billions he made to make it work.

The United Nations World Food Programme took him up on it. They made a plan. They published it. It might not have ended world hunger forever, but it would save over 42 million food insecure people from famine and give them a chance they wouldn’t otherwise have.

They answered Musk’s challenge and held out their hands… and they got nothing.

Musk chose to give the money to his own foundation instead.

We see what he does with the power given to him in political circles, too. We saw DOGE. We saw how he gutted USAID. We saw the Nazi salute he felt comfortable enough to make at Trump’s inauguration.

He feels untouchable. He can do whatever he wants and face no consequences.

His very punchable face remains unscathed.

Elon’s a clear example of all of this, but he’s not the only one. How many billionaires are there? Multi-billionaires? People who have the same level of wealth he had when he made that promise.

The plan still exists. The numbers and calculations will have changed, but I’ll bet you could still get pretty far with a few billion. Hell, a handful of them could get together, donate a small fraction of their wealth and still successfully fund the plan without noticing a blip in their savings accounts.

To date, none of them have.

Imagine being able to solve world hunger for a year. Imagine being able to solve issues like homelessness and medical debt in the blink of an eye. Hell, John Oliver made a little dent in that for a gag on his show a while back, buying debt for pennies on the dollar and forgiving it on air.

$15 million in medical debt erased in the blink of an eye. 9,000 people released from the cycle of owing money they couldn’t afford to pay back. That was inspiring to me, and to my spouse — who immediately declared that if we ever strike it rich, that’s what he wants to do for people.

They could do that. They could wipe out debt for tens of millions of people if they felt like it. Just for a lark. They won’t, because it doesn’t even occur to them to do that.

And I know the argument people will respond with. They aren’t obligated to.

Nobody can force you to give up your money; it’s yours to do with as you see fit, and that’s true. I can’t be compelled to donate my savings against my will, and it’s not morally wrong to save cash for a rainy day.

But if you had the power to solve the world’s thorniest, most destructive problems without losing a decimal point in your net worth, wouldn’t you want to?

Wouldn’t that be worth it?

They don’t think so. And that makes sense, because you don’t become a billionaire by having compassion.

In fact, having that extreme level of wealth directly strips empathy out of you as a side effect. That may seem like a bold claim, but I have receipts to back it up.

Billinaires are demonized by every day people like you and me, and that’s largely because they fucking earn it.

They hoard enough wealth for themselves to feed entire cities while the poor starve, live homeless in the streets and beg for charity on GoFundMe.

They get there by being willing to exploit others for their own gain. They step on those below them and force their heads underwater to keep themselves afloat. There’s no such thing as a good billionaire who got there via hard work.

I’m not the only one to write about this, either.

Hell, they don’t even pay their fair share in taxes. And contrary to semi-popular belief, taxes are not theft; they’re the rent we pay to live in a civil society. They only become theft when the government isn’t holding up its end of the deal.

As for billionaire philanthropy, don’t get me started. I’ve already been there and vented about that nonsense. Taxes go further and help fund more than a charitable donation aimed at tax deduction.

If you’re going to donate with that much money in your pockets, go big or go home.

Don’t do one of those ‘my company will match every donation my customers make!’ drives. That works for small businesses, not for billionaire-run corporations. Don’t be a jerk, just pay your fair share.

Hoarding wealth is a bad look, but it’s also bad for the economy. Think about it; when you and I get money, we spend it in our communities. We pay the local mechanic to fix our car. We go out to eat at a local restaurant. We get our hair cut, we get ice cream, we shop.

We put that money into the local economy.

What do billionaires do with their money? Do they eat at the local mom-and-pop burger joint? Do they buy a million burgers? Do they go to the local shop for ice cream? Shop downtown?

Or do they pay people to bring them the gourmet stuff from out of town? A private chef, private hair stylist. Billionaires don’t put money into the little things that make a local economy flourish; they put it into the stream of money that pays for the high-end delicacies.

Why pay the mechanic down the road when you can buy a private jet?

From me, $5 generates value well above its actual worth as it passes from hand to hand in my town. In a billionaire’s hands, that $5 just sits in a bank, or it goes into the most exclusive, only-for-the-wealthy kind of businesses.

Billionaires do not contribute to that local economy. They’re a drain on it.

Don’t pull the ‘they create jobs’ line, either. That might be worth something if they paid living wages and treated their workers like human beings rather than slaves. Looking at you, Bezos.

The point is, one wealthy man can’t prop up an economy. But thousands of regular people paid good wages with disposable income — that makes an economy flourish.

That’s a lot of money pouring into local businesses who can then hire more workers and employ more people and give them money to spend. It rolls on and builds from there.

In short, the economy isn’t fixed by wealth concentration.

It’s fixed by wealth distribution.

Raising the minimum wage and capping costs of living are the best tools we’ve got for fixing stagnating economies, assuming you aren’t willing to go all out on Universal Basic Income.

Letting a billionaire exploit more wage-slaves is not the answer. Widespread improvement is.

The existence of billionaires is a fundamental failure of society.

Nobody should be able to hoard so much wealth while homeless people exist. It goes without saying, but a decent human being would feel some measure of compassion for other people — at least enough to want to help.

But we live in a world and a culture where enormous wealth is seen as proof of success, and not exploitation and cruelty the way it ought to be viewed.

Nobody should want to be a billionaire. Hell, I don’t.

If I had that much money, I know what I’d do with it. I’d pay off mine and my spouse’s debt and square away enough so we’d never have to work again to live well. We’re frugal on the whole; we’re not private yacht people.

We’re nice home by the sea and a dependable car kind of people.

The rest of the money would go towards helping our families first, then local charities. I want to donate to shelters for the homeless and domestic violence survivors.

My spouse, as I mentioned, would want to start a debt buying company specifically so we could forgive it and free people from the cycle of debt and poverty.

If we had billions, we could do so much good. But because we feel that way, we’ll never have that kind of money. We just don’t have it in us to screw people over for a buck and hoard money for ourselves.

That’s why I have no respect for the people who actually do have that kind of money. What they choose to do with it reveals who they are, and I don’t like what I see.

That kind of wealth shouldn’t exist. And you shouldn’t want to be the kind of person who has it.

Solidarity wins.

Welcome to another overly hot Friday morning. You’ll have to bear with me, I’m fighting off a little sniffle at the moment. I work in a pharmacy, I catch every single bug that’s being passed around town these days.

Today I want to talk a little bit about immigration. Not the economic benefits in raw numbers, that’s already been done a thousan…

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Wildfires are spreading, toxic fumes are rolling across the U.S. leaving people seriously sick, and the ocean is warming faster than scientists thought it would.

Americans are struggling to make ends meet, with affordable food, housing and medicine well out of reach for the average working class family. The economy continues to circle the drain as the cost of living rockets skyward, yet the stock market shows corporate gains are soaring.

In short, there’s massive instability.

What’s the President of the U.S. doing while all of this is going on?

Ending the “ceasefire” — bold word choice there — in Iran, dropping bombs on them and raving that the Iranian people plan to assassinate him. At the same time he’s at NATO calling for the U.S. to take over Greenland.

Again.

The answer from both the Greenlanders and Denmark is still ‘no.’

Every time I look at the news these days I just have to shake my head. The man is out of his mind, and he’s constantly picking new fights and causing more and more damage to the reputation of the United States.

He’s murdering people around the world, both through action in the form of boms, and inaction due to his disregard for humanitarian aid.

He’s not even offering full assistance to Venezuela in the wake of their latest mass disaster, the pair of devastating earthquakes that recently tore down chunks of their capital city.

The U.S. government has pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in aid for the relief effort, but hasn’t bothered lifting multiple sanctions which make it a lot harder for the government — what’s left of it — to do its job.

Even as the U.S. still holds Venezuela’s old leader in chains after a ‘military operation’ to kidnap him and his wife. Even as Trump sells Venezuelan oil and pockets the funds.

In spite of his claims to have freed the people of Venezuela from an authoritarian dictator for their own good, their economy continues to decline rather than improve.

Shocking. Trump horribly damaging a nation’s economy? Who’s ever heard of that?

Trump would rather do literally anything except better the lives of the people he was supposedly elected to represent. Up to and including getting their children killed in wars on Middle Eastern soil.

Hey, speaking of war — didn’t he promise to never start new wars and to get the U.S. out of the Middle East?

Weird.

Anyhow, I just needed to rant about this shit. It’s unconscionable how he continues to ignore the plight of his people, all the while chanting ‘America First’ and ‘Make America Great Again’ as if that was ever something he cared about.

He just wanted power for himself. And he doesn’t even know how to use it.

Solidarity wins.

There’s a toxic cloud spreading across multiple states down south in the U.S.

Arizona, California, Colorado, Indiana and Michigan are being swamped with a combination of ground-level ozone and wildfire smoke, and the fumes are spreading.

People impacted by this can expect serious respiratory issues; airway irritation and difficulty breathing. Particles in the smoke can wind their way into your bloodstream through your lungs, damaging multiple organs, including your heart and blood vessels.

If you have to be outside — please don’t, especially during the damned heat wave — then please wear a filtering mask or respirator and limit the time as much as humanly possible.

If you live elsewhere, keep an eye out for dangerous air alerts in your area. This stuff never stays contained, and the risk of spreading out on the wind is high.

Pets and kids need to be kept indoors, too.

Pollution is a real nasty bitch. Fumes make their way into the air, and chemicals leech into our soil and into our water sources. Either way, we’re being exposed to all kinds of poisons as a result of human construction and activities.

Just think of all the lead our parents and grandparents must have ingested over the years before we decided to fix that shit. Hell — Biden and Kamala made a concerted effort to strip lead just a few years ago.

That recent. Scary, right?

But lead isn’t the only toxin to fear. Asbestos. Carbon Monoxide. Arsenic. Bleach. All of the cleaning products in your home cabinets, and all of the chemicals used in constructing your house.

I can’t walk my dog without seeing signs on six or seven of my neighbour’s lawns, warning people not to let their pets roam nearby because they’ve been sprayed with pesticides.

The signs don’t work on wildlife, though. They don’t stop squirrels, birds, or mice.

They also don’t work on excited little kids running over the neighbour’s yard to get a ball that rolled away from their games.

We spew pollution carelessly, as a matter of convenience, and it’s so ubiquitous that we don’t even think about it. We don’t consider the harm we might be doing to anybody else.

Hell, our water sources is local underground springs. How much of that toxic shit melts down into my fucking drinking water because you wanted your lawn to be green?

Ocean temperatures are rising, pollution is rampant, and the air we breathe is getting dangerous, too.

It never ends. It just keeps getting worse.

Solidarity wins.

Every year we hit a new record for ocean warming.

Every year we lose reefs, we lose species, we see mass die-offs and pollution. We lose a little bit more of the most wondrous, spectacular ecosystems our planet has to offer.

We ain’t called the Blue Planet for nothin’, and our oceans cover the vast majority of Earth’s surface. Most life on Earth exists in the water, and everything alive depends on that substance to survive.

It’s liquid life. The miracle that allows us to exist.

If you know me, you know I love the ocean. I was born on the shores of the Atlantic — or at least close enough that you could see the beach from the hospital windows. I grew up hunting shells, being harassed by sea gulls and observing crabs scuttling across the sands.

I love the ocean. The sound of the waves may as well be my heart beat, and I’ve written about it extensively.

So when I tell you that the newest records terrify me to my core, you know I’m not kidding. I said as much when I warned you about the loss of ocean monitoring systems due to Trump’s campaign to ignore climate change — though, thankfully, public pressure won out on that specific issue.

He had to give in and stop fucking around with the project. Thank goodness for that, because this news proves exactly how badly we need it.

Every time a new, higher degree is reached, we lose something vital.

Every degree is a new loss of polar ice, more carbon released into the atmosphere, another stone on the scale tipping us over the edge of no return.

I’ve written before about how I find more plastic than shells on the shore now. I find more trash than driftwood, more nets than crabs. I find more dead fish than I can find darting through the shallows, flourishing like they did when I was little.

I remember chasing schools of tiny fish out in the bay when I was small. I wonder if there are any left these days? I haven’t been up home in a long time, but I was by the ocean shore a few months ago after my wedding.

I didn’t see much life out there. Just the gulls. And not even enough of them to hear their calls from afar.

The latest report from Copernicus Marine Service, Europe’s ocean observation organization, just came out a few days ago. Their scientists are raising the alarm for the hottest June on record with regard to ocean warming.

This is disastrous for the ocean, of course, but also for us. This will bring more extreme weather, impact fishing and marine-based agriculture, and increase the risk of diseases and toxic algae blooms.

The North Atlantic, my neck of the proverbial woods, has been struck by severe marine heatwaves which pose a risk to our native species. Our sharks, fish, whales and crustaceans are used to a certain pattern of temperature and weather, and that is being heavily disrupted now.

When you fuck up the ecosystem, animals die or migrate away and food chains collapse.

Food chain collapse destabilizes everything.

The Earth is a closed system, a delicate balancing act that has evolved to work a certain way over millions of years. We keep throwing wrenches into that system and expecting it to work itself out like it’s no big deal.

Well, it don’t work that way, sweetheart.

Mama Nature doesn’t give a shit what your bottom line is, she follows her own rules and there are consequences for pissing her off.

You wanna talk about ‘Fuck Around and Find Out?’

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Solidarity wins.

I’m a huge Fallout fan. I’ve brought that up before, I’m sure.

New Vegas is one of my favourite games of all time — and I would be playing it every day if I could get the darn thing to run on my system without crashing every two seconds.

It’s a fantastic RPG experience even by today’s standards, but it is old as dirt and unstable as hell.

As you might guess from the name if you aren’t already familiar, Fallout: New Vegas is set in post-apocalyptic Nevada, what they call the ‘Mojave Wasteland.’ It spans from Goodsprings all the way to Lake Mead, Hoover Dam and Las Vegas, the remains of which are the titular New Vegas of the game world.

The main conflict of the game is between several major powers who all want to claim Hoover Dam and the electricity it could generate if they can get it up and running again, as well as the fresh, clean water source of Lake Mead.

New Vegas is set in 2281, 200 years or so past the nuclear war of 2077. And there’s a lot I could say about Fallout and how unnervingly familiar the lore of the Pre-War America feels right now. And I have:

Seriously, play the games and watch the show. It’s well worth it!

But at this point the most unbelievable element of the games is the fact that, in 2281, there is enough water left in Lake Mead to keep the Hoover Dam at operating capacity.

Because as of right now, in 2026, climate change has brought the water levels in Lake Mead all the way down to 1,043 feet above MSL, or Mean Sea Level. The full capacity of Lake Mead sits around 1,229 feet.

That means that as of current measurements, it is 180 feet below what it ought to be. The level of the lake itself has dropped that far.

The reservoir is under 30% capacity.

Lake Mead is the largest fresh water reservoir in the United States, and it supports a population of over 25 million people, and gods know how many agricultural centers across multiple western states.

Between that water loss and the fact that the headwaters of the Colorado River — another major water source that over 30 million people depend on — are drying up, drought and aridification are having a severe impact on people’s livelihoods and survival.

Lake Powell, the second largest reservoir in the U.S., just hit a record low level this summer and the Glen Canyon dam is at risk of destruction.

The Fallout games are often based on the need for securing clean water and other such resources in the post-post apocalypse, but it never reckons with the idea that those resources simply won’t be there.

At the current rate of fall, it’ll only be a few years, maybe a couple of decades if we’re lucky before these water sources just don’t exist anymore. At ‘Dead Pool’ level, where the water level drops too low to flow through dams, those power sources will vanish too.

Tens of millions of people will lose their fresh water sources and entire regions of the U.S. will be left without localized fresh water. You can stave that off for a while by transporting and delivering water from afar, but that’s not sustainable for any length of time.

Nevermind the huge loss of electricity, requiring massive infrastructure overhaul. Losing the dams wouldn’t totally wipe it out or anything, but you’d be looking at rolling blackouts and instability for parts of the year. Mostly in marginalized neighbourhoods, obviously.

And that’s in the high heat of that region. Imagine a summer of rolling blackouts in Arizona, Nevada and California. Woof.

We’re talking about a mass migration, parts of the country being unlivable and forcing people to relocate to better climes with hospitable conditions.

This is the reality of climate change. We’re here. I don’t know where we’re going to be tomorrow.

Solidarity wins.

Tomorrow is the 4th of July.

It’s a day where hundreds of millions of people across the United States will gather to celebrate their country, its history, and its glorious ideals.

It’s a day where their country will once again fail spectacularly to keep up those ideals.

Tens of thousands of new people are being detained by ICE every week, citizens are being shot in the street, protestors — once protected by the First Amendment — are being charged with terrorism and given 50 to 100 years in prison.

The man in the White House is a tyrant, exactly the sort of creature that the Founding Fathers established the U.S. to escape. A wannabe King without a crown, who can’t stand to hear the word ‘no.’

A man who doesn’t respect freedom.

When the Constitutional Convention was held back in 1787, there was debate and uncertainty about what kind of government the new fledgling country would have. It just came out of a serious war of independence from the British monarchy, and the people weren’t keen for a repeat.

So when Benjamin Franklin left the room, the crowd of onlookers held their breath.

One nervous citizen asked, “What sort of government do we have?”

And Benjamin Franklin famously answered, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

What he meant was that democracy is fragile. It’s a tiny bird with hollow bones, beating its wings as hard as it can to stay aloft. It depends on its people to help it lift the weight of the nation off the ground.

Democracy, as I’ve said many times, only functions on the backs of its citizens.

Your actions make or break it. Either you keep it going by doing your civic duties, voting and protesting and keeping informed and showing up to hold truth to power…

Or you don’t. And it all falls apart.

I hope y’all enjoy your 4th of July celebrations. But I also hope they inspire you to remember what your country is supposed to be.

A Republic. Not a monarchy, not an oligarchy, not a deranged dystopian ethnostate as Trump and his cronies so badly want.

The world has always trended towards progress. You’ve gone past what your Founding Fathers built to introduce greater equality, end the barbaric practices like slavery — sort of, you’ve got work to do there — and give more rights to your citizens.

But there’s so much more room for improvement. So much space to grow.

This 4th of July should be a reminder of the fight you have on your hands, and an inspiration to stand up. Let it be a day of protest as much as a day of joy. Take your country back from the evil brewing in the halls of power.

If you do, it will remain a democracy. If you do, don’t just settle for the status quo — build it better than it was before. Build a country where everyone has a voice, not just the straight, white, cisgender, able-bodied wealthy men that currently hold the most power.

Make it a country where diversity is celebrated and respected, not treated like a dirty word.

Make a country where people live freely, no longer marginalized and sidelined for their skin colour, their birth place, their level of ability, their religion or sex or gender or who they love.

Then, for once, America will stand for that lofty goal it once professed but always fell short of achieving; all men created equal. All people created equal.

A true democracy. If you can keep it.

Solidarity wins.

Pride month has ended for another year. And just as the month falls away, we’re being reminded why exactly it remains so important for so many of us in this day and age.

In recent years, several countries in Africa have written new legislation increasing penalties for LGBTQ+ identities. They range from prison time to the death penalty for repeat offenses.

Countries that have set this in motion include Ghana, Uganda, Mali, Senegal and Burkina Faso. The latest of these is Niger.

Since criminalising same-sex relationships in February for the first time in their history, Niger has started a witch-hunt for LGBTQ+ people and has now restricted access to HIV treatment and prevention for gay men.

This includes refusing to supply testing services, condoms and PrEP.

Dozens of people have been arrested and detained for trial on the accusation of being gay.

This is hatred, pure and simple. Stripping our rights away doesn’t end LGBTQ+ identities. We don’t stop existing because of the law. All you do is drive us into the closet, make us live in fear, and give people license to hurt us.

We are born the way we are. It isn’t a choice.

This is why Pride is still necessary — I’d argue that it’s more necessary now than ever.

Look at what’s happening in Africa. In Russia. In the United States.

We still need to fight for our lives and our loves as fiercely as our elders did in the Stonewall Riots, all those years ago. We will not lay down and die like they want us to.

We’ll make the ol’ geezers proud. That’s why we call it Pride.

And Pride will keep being a thing until we don’t need it anymore.

Solidarity wins.

Happy Canada Day!

I don’t really celebrate it the way I did when I was a kid. We were all gung-ho for the flag and the fireworks when I was little, buying glowsticks from vendors and hanging by the river as the sun went down.

We always went out to dinner after the fireworks ended. It was a whole ‘thing.’

As an adult, however, I don’t really go out of my way to celebrate my country. I haven’t done so ever since the whole Residential School thing hit the news in a big way.

I didn’t know about it. A genocide within my lifetime — the last school closed when I was 2, and the horror and trauma hasn’t fully stopped — and I didn’t even know about it. My government did a great job of covering up the atrocities.

It rather soured my desire to celebrate the country that was doing shit like that.

That said, since Trump’s whole ‘51st State’ bullshittery began, a lot of us are feeling a good deal more patriotic these days and I am no exception.

My country isn’t perfect, we have skeletons in our closet and buried in the front lawn. But we’re taking steps in the right direction. Or at least we have been lately, even if we haven’t gone nearly far enough.

I don’t think I’m ready to celebrate yet, not until we make a real showing of genuine progress towards making things right, but I will at least acknowledge the day.

I’m not going to go out and see the fireworks. I won’t be buying any glowsticks or putting a flag on my lawn or singing the national anthem. I’ll leave that to the people enjoying our rare and hopefully temporary little burst of nationalistic fervor.

But I will at least wish people a happy Canada Day, wishing them fine weather for celebration and I will hope for a brighter future.

I will encourage my fellow Canadians to keep up the fight, boycotting American goods and buying local when you can. Keep up the resistance and make it abundantly clear that we are our own nation, with our own values and traditions and rights.

Trump will never own us. Elbows up, Canadians!

Solidarity wins.

Much of Europe is collapsing under a record-breaking heatwave that is killing people from Spain to the Czech Republic.

People are dying in the UK. They’re dying in France, in Spain, and in Germany. Ireland is seeing temperatures they so rarely experienced in the past that 25 degrees for five days is their idea of a heatwave.

That’s cute. Ours in Canada smash 35 and last for weeks.

Where I live, only on thunderstorm days do we see lower than 25 during the summer these days. Right now, looking at my forecast, I have a week of 30+ days and 20 degree nights ahead of me.

That’s now my normal. It never used to be when I was young, but that’s climate change for you.

But going back to Europe, they’re boiling. Even Germany is recording temperatures above 40 degrees right now. For you Americans, that’s about 104. If you want to check the other temperatures I’ve mentioned, here’s a link to a conversion chart.

To call this an emergency is a dire understatement. The World Health Organization has listed 1,300 global deaths linked directly to the heat so far.

This is climate change in action, something a staggering number of uneducated, incurious twerps in the U.S. still somehow believe is a hoax.

I’ve met some of these people. One of them told me that, quote, “The government controls the weather anyway!”

My brain stopped processing English for a few seconds to try and save me from that conversation.

The worst part is, a lot of those ignorant twits are currently running the United States government right now. They’re stripping regulations and environmental protections meant to help curb climate change and slow its escalation.

But thanks to the Republicans, the brakes are being stripped from the train. The U.S. is not the only contributer to climate change, of course, but as one of the world’s largest economies, it’s a huge one.

The day Trump was elected for the second time, I said to my mother that we were fucked. I knew he didn’t give a shit about the climate in terms of saving lives or ecosystems.

He’ll lie and strip protections and convince his cult to burn, baby, burn! Drill, baby, drill! All in the name of short term profits.

The worst part is, no matter what he says, he knows it’s not a hoax. During his first term, he went out of his way to try and protect his seaside golf courses from sea level rise, citing ‘global climate change’ as the reasoning behind it.

He fucking knows. He doesn’t care. Hell, why should he? He won’t be alive to experience the worst of it. That’s a problem for his children and grandchildren, not for him.

A man like Trump doesn’t care about the world after he’s no longer in it. Hell, for all we know he thinks the world stops existing completely after he dies. I wouldn’t put it past him.

Most of his policies seem to maximize human suffering in the name of making money. This is no different.

It’s going to make extreme weather, like we’re seeing in Europe, more common and much, much worse.

Solidarity wins.

I harp on the United States a lot.

Out of everything I could be writing about, most often, I reach for American news networks and scan the airways for problems that need highlighting. I don’t have to look far.

I’m Canadian. Our politics follow American politics by a few years; our politicians follow your lead. Our Overton Window is closely tied to yours, so keeping abreast of what’s happening in the States is pretty important. These days, it’s vital for our national security.

Many of the people that I dearly love are Americans. They’re stuck living in this shitshow, and I hate seeing the rights and the freedoms they so dearly love stripped away like bad paint.

I had something pointed out to me by one of those people, not as a critique of what I personally write, but of something they’ve seen elsewhere.

People have always hated on the United States. Always. Long before Trump stumbled into the Oval Office.

For all I know some of my readers are walking away feeling like I look down on them because of what I write about on the daily. And I don’t want that to be the case.

I love the American people.

That probably sounds like bullshit, but I genuinely do. I used to travel through the States, specifically New England, several times a year. It’s a beautiful place. I’ve met very, very few assholes on my travels. Sure, some people I’ve come across have been… out there… but hell, I have stories from Canada-land too.

Canada isn’t perfect either, but I wish you all had a fraction of what we have here.

I want to make this very clear: I criticize the United States because I think its people deserve better than the short end of the stick that they’re currently holding.

I do not hate the American people. Far from it. What I hate is seeing them suffer because they’re dealing with systems that prevent them from living the full, happy lives that they should be entitled to.

Do you know how many times I’ve listened to my American friends tell me that they can’t afford basic healthcare? Do you know how many times I’ve listened to talk of gerrymandering and voting interference and just plain corruption from the systems of government?

Again, I’ve been hearing all of this for a long, long time. Much longer than Trump has had any power.

But to be clear, that’s not just an American thing either. If you think there’s a country on the planet that doesn’t have skeletons in its closet, I have a lovely bridge to sell you in Saskatchewan.

Also, a lovely building that used to be a very specific kind of boarding school.

I criticize America for the same reason I criticize any other government of any other country. Because it can do better. And it should.

And for the record, the people of the States deserve better than to be treated like crap about it. This may come as a shock to others, somehow, but most of them don’t actually like what’s going on either.

They also want their country to improve.

Sure, there are the indoctrinated pseudo-patriots I’ve harped on before. And boy howdy, have I ever harped on them. But we have those guys in Canada too. Not as many, but we have a smaller population. They are not a uniquely American phenomenon, and it’s ridiculous to insist that they are.

We can hate on the MAGA crowd and the racist asshats without shitting on the average American citizen who hasn’t done anything wrong. You can dump the bad apples out of the barrel without throwing out the healthy fruit.

And yeah, America does have problems.

Every nation in the history of the world has had problems.

The U.S.A. is the wealthiest nation on the planet and people are begging on GoFundMe to pay for their cancer treatments. I’ve got a whole article on the concept of Perseverance Porn — the U.S. has turned it into a propaganda artform!

There’s something wrong here, but it’s not the citizens. It’s the greedy bastards steering the ship onto the rocks, believing that they have a lifeboat.

And I think that’s why people sneer at America so much.

It’s the wealthiest nation at the front of the world stage. It catches a lot of resentment from the rest of the world because of what it represents. So, even though other countries have it considerably worse — just an example, but North Korea fucking exists — people celebrate when the States fucks up.

And they should not be celebrating. Because when a country fucks up, its people get hurt. I can’t celebrate the nation of North Korea fucking up because its people then suffer for the actions of the elites. Same with China, same with Canada, and Russia, and the same with the United States.

In fact, when the U.S. fucks up, everybody suffers with them. Just the loss of USAID alone will kill millions of people around the globe.

We can criticize governments. We should criticize governments.

But we need to remember that the government does not always reflect the views of the people it’s supposed to represent. The main problem in the States is that the government often fails to do exactly that; it fails to fight for its people’s interests.

The country of the United States of America is made up of people. Just regular human beings, living regular human lives. Going to work, eating dinner, raising families, and laughing with their friends.

There is nothing wrong with them. On the whole, they’re good people. Very good people, some of the very best people that I know. Good, hardworking people with strong values who want to stand up for the underdog and fight for what’s right.

The real patriots of the U.S.A. are some of the fiercest and staunchest warriors that I’ve ever met, and they put the fucking work in to help others when they need it.

Hating on the country doesn’t do us any good. It certainly doesn’t help them.

We must point out the harm that’s being done in America, absolutely. But even in the States where shitty laws are being passed, there are elected representatives that are real patriots, fighting for what’s right.

And some people are showing exactly what you can accomplish when they win. Looking at you, New York! Hell yeah!

That’s what America could become. That’s what we need to talk about. We need to talk about what the people actually need, not what the propaganda has taught so many of them to want, and to fear.

We need to talk about the possibilities that appear when people are willing to stand up.

So, yes. I criticise the United States, but I don’t do it because I hate the country. I do it because I want to see its wounds heal, and its people set free. I want to see its laws progress, and the voices of the marginalized actually listened to.

I want what real patriots want. Not pseodo-patriotic nationalists like Trump’s MAGA cultists.

I want to see America actually fulfill its own ideals. And I have hope that it someday will.

I want to see American citizens get what they deserve, so that someday, the American flag will no longer be seen as a symbol of oppression. I want it to stand for something good.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Solidarity wins.

As a heatwave pummels Europe so severely that even Germany is sweltering under lethal temperatures, we’re getting a much-needed run of rainy days here in the Maritime provinces.

The so-called ‘Super El Niño’ threatens to render our summer harsh and long-lasting, potentially negating our winte…

Read more

Two major earthquakes have just hit Venezuela; both above 7. On the Richter scale, anything above 7 is considered a major event, causing massive damage.

Anything higher than that can completely level cities. An 8 is a catastrophe that obliterates communities at the heart, laying great monuments low.

Venezuela was just smashed by two separate quakes in short succession, and both struck near the capital city of Caracas. The first was 7.2, the second was measured at 7.5.

Rescuers are desperately searching through the rubble of collapsed structures, trying to find a way down to the sound of screaming, pleading voices trapped under the buildings.

So far, 164 people have been confirmed dead, but judging by the damage there are estimates that thousands could be lost. Compounding the tragedy, this happened on a national holiday where most people were at home with their loved ones — entire families have been buried, on a day when they should have been relaxing and enjoying themselves.

Multiple cities and villages have been impacted, power grids have been taken down, and airports are closing due to the damages and in fear of aftershocks.

The quakes hit hard enough that people felt the shocks as far away as Columbia. Picture that.

Now, multiple countries have already pledged support and to send assistance for the rescue efforts, including the U.S.

Time will tell if the response is actually proportional, considering Trump’s attitude it could go either way. He might throw paper towels at them, or he might actually send real help if he feels he ‘owns’ Venezuela after his power grab where he forcibly kidnapped their president via military action.

No way to know.

If you want to help, there are several major charities already throwing out calls for donations — Save the Children, Global Giving and Direct Relief all have campaigns for earthquake relief already set up.

I’m going to be donating to Direct Relief, personally.

If you can’t donate your money, which is understandable given economic conditions right now, please help by spreading the word about relief efforts and the evolving situation.

The more eyes on this, the better!

Solidarity wins.

When Trump was elected this second time around, my spouse and I pressured our brother-in-law to get his citizenship.

He was born outside of the U.S., but he’d been living in the country for years; he has an American wife who has a successful career, American kids, and ran several successful businesses. He works hard — too hard, according to the family at large — and generally lives the American dream in a nice house with a big yard, a dog, and a pool.

We begged him to get his citizenship because of his last name. It wasn’t English. He and his family aren’t white, at least by the standards of the administration.

He thought we were being silly. He had his Green Card, why would he need citizenship? We begged and pressured and hammered on him; under Trump, your Green Card doesn’t mean anything.

In the end, while rolling his eyes at our ‘overly melodramatic predictions’, he went ahead and got his citizenship.

Thankfully he managed to do it before ICE started taking people from their immigration meetings. To this day, he thinks we’re exaggerating. He’s mad that I won’t visit anymore, and even at my wedding he tried to convince my parents that the danger is overblown.

They don’t believe him. None of us do. We just hope he gets to keep that attitude.

Yesterday, our fears were vindicated when the Supreme Court of the United States passed down a ruling. In a stroke, they have made it easier to strip protected, legal resident status from Green Card holders who are accused of a crime.

Not convicted, accused. They’re giving border officials the ability to ignore their rights without a trial.

According to that article I linked above, they’re also considering Trump’s birthright citizenship arguments and whether migrant refugees should be protected while fleeing danger at home.

Yeah. I’m glad my brother-in-law got his citizenship in time. Even if he isn’t paying attention, we are, and we don’t want to see his family ripped apart.

While we’re all laughing at the algae pool — and I am, heartily and with gusto — Trump’s regime continues to strip rights and protections away from the average person.

They continue to batter and murder. They continue to put people into Concentration Camps. They continue to spread their hatred and take food out of children’s hands.

Don’t get distracted. Don’t let them sneak this shit through under your radar.

Solidarity wins.