Les Holt
@lesholt.bsky.social
Wordsmith. Working in / on that window of regulation; squeegee conversations abound. Banner image: systemic /sĩ-stēm'ĩk 🌐 ✍️ 🇨🇦 “To be clear: I’m not talking about reform. I’m talking about complete system redesign.” —Carole Estabrooks
So, I finally did a TED talk, and it got released today. I seem to have been quite intense, but I'm grateful they left in my Trump joke. www.ted.com/talks/bill_m...
Our last, best chance to cool the Earth
We're living through oil wars, wildfire smoke and extreme weather driven by a warming planet. But environmentalist Bill McKibben says one thing is finally going right: the price of clean energy has pl...
ted.com
Every letter. Every post. Every sign. Every call. It all counted.
Adam Radwanski@aradwanski.bsky.social · 2w agoWorth remembering: The feds were initially more favourable than not toward some manner of Billy Bishop expansion, but then left it to Doug Ford to make the case, and…here we are.
Friday night lights aka late breaking news release. Ka boom. Toronto anger was not for naught. You moved a monolith: the Liberal caucus. www.thestar.com/politics/fed...
Federal government grounds Billy Bishop airport expansion
The just-concluded public survey suggested strong public opposition to the project, according to a federal government official.
thestar.com
Climate change does not cause wildfires, but hot and dry conditions make them much more likely to spread. In Canada, 9 of the 10 worst wildfire years were both dryer and hotter than normal. And these fires are burning in areas that were historically not managed or suppressed.
Over at the Climate Brink I take a deep dive into climate and wildfires in Canada, and why complaints about Canadian forest management largely miss the mark as conditions rapidly have become more favorable for megafires: www.theclimatebrink....
“Extreme weather. Fire weather” “Rather, it’s a landscape that waits, and then burns catastrophically under extreme weather.” “We are not necessarily seeing more fire than ever everywhere, but rather a rapid rate of increase with the increasing prevalence of fire weather driving it.” Important.
Canada's boreal wildfires aren't just bad forest management
Higher fire season temperatures are strongly correlated with increased area burned
theclimatebrink.com
An open letter about jets at Toronto’s Island Airport: Veteran planners Ron Soskolne & Howard Cohen on why the proposed expansion will reverse decades of urban rejuvenation on the waterfront spacing.ca/toronto/2026...
An open letter about jets at Toronto's Island Airport - Spacing Toronto
We are City Planners who have spent many years involved in the planning of Toronto’s downtown waterfront. We have also recently chosen to live there. We hope the Government of Canada will reject the G...
spacing.ca
Canada's boreal forest is roughly the size of Europe (or 4.5x the size of Texas). Most fires are in remote areas far from habitation in that have never had a history of fire suppression or management. And the amount that is burning is directly linked to temperature and rainfall.
The forest management argument, largely valid in a California pine stand, mostly falls apart when you move it a couple of thousand kilometers north. Today's Climate Brink post provides in-depth details as to why: www.theclimatebrink.com/p/canadas-bo...
Canada's boreal wildfires aren't just bad forest management
Higher fire season temperatures are strongly correlated with increased area burned
theclimatebrink.com
“the future depends. . .upon leaders who possess the courage to be accountable. Such accountability is not merely an ethical obligation. It is an expression of compassion, of wisdom, and of our profound interdependence.” A wonderful and noble essay from Roshi @joanhalifax.bsky.social
Ethical Leadership: Understanding Power, Actualizing Accountability and Trust—by Roshi Joan Halifax
Over the years, I have witnessed many forms of leadership. I have seen leadership expressed with humility, courage, and wisdom. I have also seen leadership distorted by fear, entitlement, self-protect...
upaya.org
“Really fundamental to his life was, how do we make the world work for 100% of humanity and all of life without destroying the world and without disadvantaging people.” — Introductory video about Buckminster Fuller and his work, with Jaime Snyder from BFI
About Fuller
About Fuller R. Buckminster Fuller was a renowned 20th century inventor and visionary born in Milton, Massachusetts on July 12, 1895. Dedicating his life to making the world work for all of humanit…
bfi.org
"So next time someone tells you Canada’s fires can be solved by raking the forests, you can point out that the thing filling their sky with smoke is a lightning-struck, drought-primed boreal forest doing what a warming climate is making it do more and more often." 🔥
Zeke Hausfather@zekehausfather.com · 3w agoOver at the Climate Brink I take a deep dive into climate and wildfires in Canada, and why complaints about Canadian forest management largely miss the mark as conditions rapidly have become more favorable for megafires: www.theclimatebrink....
Two Minnesota solar farms seeded native wildflowers under their panels, and 5 years of counting revealed native bees had multiplied twentyfold, then crossed the fence to pollinate the neighbour's soybeans
Two Minnesota solar farms seeded native wildflowers under their panels, and 5 years of counting revealed native bees had multiplied twentyfold, then crossed the fence to pollinate the neighbour's soyb...
Two Minnesota solar farms planted 66 native species under their panels. Five years of counting revealed a staggering result that nobody had written into the engineering plan.
share.google
When AI can instantly mimic creative work, "it's hard to imagine many current markets for creative human expression surviving," write Thomas W. Malone and Frank Pasquale. Their answer: give creators a "learnright" and make AI companies pay to train.
Copyright Law Wasn’t Built for the AI Era. We Need ‘Learnright.'
In a market-based framework, companies would pay for the creative content used to train their AI systems, write Thomas W. Malone and Frank Pasquale.
techpolicy.press
Hey @mark-carney.bsky.social say that part again about climate action not being economical? "It would have been too expensive for Canadians. Canadians who are already struggling with affordability."
Steve Russell@steverussell.bsky.social · 3w agoThe view of the Northern Ontario forest fire haze engulfing the Toronto Skyline from Humber Bay Park West. #ForestFire #TorontoHaze #TheBigSmoke #Toronto
AT THE TOP OF EVERY FEED: 6 Markers of Climate Emergency Action providing a precise roadmap for how government and institutional leaders in Canada can—and must—confront the climate crisis. —from Climate Emergency Unit, David Suzuki Institute, and @sethdklein.bsky.social’s A Good War
6 Markers of Climate Emergency
YouTube video by Climate Emergency Unit
youtu.be
🔥 The climate emergency hasn't gone away - it's here & now. But our gvts aren't acting with urgency. Our 12-min video on the 6 Markers of Climate Emergency shows what real action looks like. Watch the full video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJdK... And visit: www.davidsuzukiinstitute.ca/ceu
Hard to describe the sorrow I feel watching the boreal forest burn, summer after summer. I was paddling on a lake yesterday when the smoke came in, and knew what was happening despite not having cell reception. Climate change is a heartbreaker.
Luke LeBrun@lukelebrun.ca · 3w agoThese images of First Nations community members evacuating Collins, Ontario on motorboats are absolutely surreal www.facebook.com/reel/1548244...
Posted while First Nations communities in Northern Ontario are literally being incinerated and the skies above Canada’s biggest cities are glowing orange
Mark Carney@mark-carney.bsky.social · 3w agoThe world wants to do more with Canada. Our MOU with Alberta will unlock those opportunities in energy — and create lasting benefits for Canadians.
Exfoliate the timeline with this absolutely incandescent performance from Raye and co. at Montreux a couple of nights ago.
RAYE & Guests - live at Montreux Jazz Festival 2026 - ARTE Concert
YouTube video by ARTE Concert
youtu.be
I am a media critic and journalism academic who has been publishing things on the internet since 1996...What I mean by an “internet archive” is this: Everything of mine you can find online by clicking. pressthink.org/2026/07/jay-...
“the future depends. . .upon leaders who possess the courage to be accountable. Such accountability is not merely an ethical obligation. It is an expression of compassion, of wisdom, and of our profound interdependence.” A wonderful and noble essay from Roshi @joanhalifax.bsky.social
Ethical Leadership: Understanding Power, Actualizing Accountability and Trust—by Roshi Joan Halifax
Over the years, I have witnessed many forms of leadership. I have seen leadership expressed with humility, courage, and wisdom. I have also seen leadership distorted by fear, entitlement, self-protect...
upaya.org
In Mark Carney's latest "Forward guidance," he claims that we need oil and gas development in the short term to "establish stability amidst this chaos." I worry that stability is hard to find in the current climate chaos. The thermometer is telling us that we have run out of time.
Net Zero in 2050 is meaningless; this heat tells us that we have to cut carbon emissions now.
Prime Minister Mark Carney is trying to thread his way through short-term crises, but it will bite him in the long run.
lloydalter.substack.com
This is my last piece of writing on staff at The Narwhal. It started with a question: how can we learn to sit with uncertainty? To me, it's a hopeful, if complicated, story and I hope you'll take some time to sit with it. Thanks to all who have read my words over these past six years.
Climate change is forcing us to adapt to uncertainty | The Narwhal
As wildfires, floods and other climate impacts accelerate, experts say our best chance of adapting may be accepting a simple truth: we can’t predict everything
thenarwhal.ca
Millie has a plan for potholes, but it doesn’t involve fixing them.
“'What will I do if AI takes my job?' “…an even deeper question: How can we, in the humanities, with our rich tradition of storytelling and character exploration, harness our knowledge to shape the future of artificial intelligence (AI)?” — Kem-Laurin Lubin September 2024
Shaping AI: Why the humanities matter in tech innovation | Waterloo News
Kem-Laurin Lubin is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Waterloo where she focuses on artificial intelligence (AI) biases and their ongoing influences on the lived experience of people, pa...
uwaterloo.ca
“. . .five questions matter: Does it address the legacy of past pollution? Does it reduce sewage entering the lake? Does it restore habitat? Does it expand genuine public access to the shoreline? And does it treat the lake as something held in trust, a relation, not a resource? #BillyBishop #July24
Mark Mattson@waterkeepermark.bsky.social · 2mo agoToronto is growing out of its past as an industrial port & realizing it is the freshwater capital of the world and wants a harbour that reflects that fact. open.substack.com/pub/waterkee...
🧵 We tend to think the internet is permanent, but VANISHING CULTURE—the new 📚 from Internet Archive—starts with a simple reality: our digital record is far more fragile than we think 🕳️ 📖 Read for free: archive.org/details/vani... 🛒 Purchase in print: www.betterworldbooks.com/product/deta... ⬇️
