Despite all the renewable energy investments and installations, actual global greenhouse gas emissions keep increasing. That’s largely due to economic growth. Indeed, as Richard Heinberg writes, the more the world economy grows, the harder it is for additions of renewable energy to turn the tide by actually replacing energy from fossil fuels, rather than just adding to it.

Canada has material interests in demonizing China and urging other countries to reduce trade with the country or decouple from its economy entirely. Foremost amongst those interests is Canada’s burgeoning battery metals industry, which Canadian political leaders and industry figures are attempting to develop into a profitable international alternative to China.

Seven empty lots that could be used to create desperately needed housing in a poor community have been left sitting empty in Toronto’s Downtown East. For years, anti-poverty activists and community members have been demanding that the city expropriate the vacant lots at 214-230 Sherbourne Street and build affordable housing on them. Now, they’re gearing up for a fight with developers.

A recent report by Oxfam found that the C02 output of the average billionaire is one million times greater than 90 percent of the world’s population. Unsurprisingly, there is also a clear disproportionality of billionaires between the Global North and the Global South: 75 percent of the world’s billionaire population is located in just 15 countries.

It’s becoming commonplace to suggest that a multipolar world order is emerging, one that will replace the US-dominated world system that has reined since the end of the Second World War and faced no serious challengers since the fall of the Soviet Union. As Greg Shupak writes, what is certain is that the old order will not fall without a great deal of struggle.

Despite much discussion about ‘lessons learned,’ there have been few efforts at actually adapting our social protection systems in the pandemic’s wake, writes researcher Chris Webb. There has been alarmingly limited recognition that our income support systems remain ill-equipped to deal with both the changing world of work and future crises.

As inflation and energy prices continue skyrocketing in Europe, people across the continent are protesting against the war in Ukraine and the anti-Russian sanctions, which have raised living costs to intolerable levels, the New York Times reported. This is making politicians nervous, as winter approaches, while studies show significant decreases in support for Kyiv and the Western proxy war.

Jerome Powell, Vladimir Putin, and Mohammad Bin Salman are on the verge of throwing the entire world into a massive depression. Powell’s interest rate increases are compounded by the action taken by Russia and Saudi Arabia, leading the OPEC+ meeting in Vienna, to cut oil production by two million barrels a day. These two leaders of OPEC+ have a visceral hatred of both President Biden and democracy itself.

Turkey’s crisis has reached unexpected levels in the last year as the lira first crossed the psychological barrier of US$1 to 10 liras, then 15 liras, and now just over 18 liras. That means savings in Turkish currency are now worth less than half of what they were in 2021. The massive downturn has pushed the hopeless and mostly young citizens into extreme and desperate action.

Shock doctrine was the term used by Naomi Klein to describe the destruction of public services and the welfare state by governments from the 1980s. Now the major central banks are applying their own ‘shock therapy’ to the world economy, intent on driving up interest rates in order to control inflation, despite the growing evidence that this will lead to a global recession next year.