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Articles by Michael Nabert
MeidasTouch (@meidastouch.com)
MeidasTouch meidastouch.com did:plc:xjc7mkotpenvhh6ffewkdpyn The crowd absolutely erupts when Carney says the Pacific Link pipeline will reduce Canada's dependence on the U.S. Mark Carney: "Careful. They might think that's election interference. They're a little touchy down there. We're not. We're getting on with it." 2026-10-16T04:06:20.755Z Enable JavaScript to use Bluesky. Learn more about Bluesky at bsky.social and atproto.com.
Photos from the great baby squirrel rescue of 2020
Photos from the great baby squirrel rescue of 2020 I can’t save the whole world, but sometimes I get to help a tiny piece of it. Press enter or click to view image in full size Mother and baby squirrel. All photos herein by the author On day one, I noticed all three of our cats were sitting side by side in a line, paying intense attention to the stairs. The next day, we figured out that it was a squirrel that had found its way into our house.
Carneynomics and Canada’s Trade War Economy
Member-only story Michael Nabert · Follow 17 min read · -- THE issue of this Canadian federal election is Donald Trump. He was pointing insane tariffs at Canada well before he got around to carpet bombing the entire global economy with them, and plans to strip us of our sovereignty as rapidly as possible. It’s not like America wants Canadians. What they want are our fresh water, oil, minerals, & real estate.
Lessons Canada’s Liberals Refuse To Learn From US Politics
Member-only story Michael Nabert · Follow 14 min read · -- Photoshopped by author The 2024 US federal election was disheartening for much of the world. Here in Canada, it marked a frightening shift. Canada and America have long been widely intertwined. Watching our boisterous next door neighbour plummet into full throttle hostile fascism is a rude shock. Or, for those who have paid more attention in recent decades, a long predicted inevitable continuation of ugly visible trends.
How Long Covid Is Rewriting The Final Chapter Of My Life
My approach to coping with cognitive gaps. My father had a truly remarkable brain, with a spectacular memory. He just never seemed to forget things. I remember I used to test him by showing him long strings of numbers or nonsense and asking him to remember them. Weeks or months later, I’d ask him to recite them back to me, retrieving the paper I’d originally written them on from wherever I’d hidden it to check. He never flubbed.
My Greatest Climate Success
Being a climate activist means taking up the short end of the biggest David v Goliath struggle on the planet. It’s not the sort of thing you keep striving at because it feels particularly doable. It’s just a straight up moral imperative. Nothing else we might hope for our future is going to matter if we don’t accomplish this herculean, virtually impossible task. If we hope for a tomorrow where we aren’t increasingly roasted, the first place we are told to look is our personal carbon footprint.
Any Way The Wind Blows
Many readers are familiar that ocean currents, particularly the AMOC, which not only moves heat around but also stirs up nutrients between deep and shallow waters, are among the urgent climate tipping points we’re watching. Wind systems are the currents of the sky, likewise important and likewise changing. Because temperature and moisture dominate a lot of climate systems, scientists have focussed on them enough to provide us with a pretty thorough understanding.
Where Your Grocery Dollar Went
Whoever you are, wherever you’re reading this, you’ve probably got a favourite food. If you’re like everyone I know, putting your hands on it is probably becoming a lot harder. Difficulty getting something you want can be immensely frustrating, but not getting something you need can be fatal. We can survive without our favourite meal, but no meal is a different story. Water, food & shelter are nonnegotiable basic needs.
Long Covid is Rewriting the Final Chapter of My Life
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Will Wildfire Evacuations Be A Superspreader Event?
Today, wildfire evacuees will begin returning to Yellowknife, while residents of other communities in the Northwest Territories that are still threatened by active fires await the green light for themselves. Thousands of cars will wend their way through fire zones eager for the comforts of home. Some may bring with them something that they didn't plan on and can't see: a possibly asymptomatic Covid case or other infection.
Wildfire Evacuation Bankruptcies Are coming
The massive wildfire evacuation I'm currently a part of is a financial nightmare. More than half of Canadians are less than one unexpected $200 expense away from insolvency. Many if not most of >30,000 evacuees faced worse than that on their very first day. Our return to our communities will be the end of it as far as the news cycle is concerned, but for the NWT, it's barely the beginning. While flames never reached the heart of the city, economically this will be like a bomb went off.
Evacuee Privilege
A gift beyond words: the quiet tree lined street where we were offered temporary safe haven while enormous wildfires threaten our community. I'm incredibly, almost unbelievably lucky. Right now, I'm a climate refugee, but all signs point to that being a temporary condition. At least this time. It makes me far more fortunate than millions of other people around the world in the same boat (or, for far too many climate migrants, lack-of-boat).
The Road Of Ashes
photograph taken somewhere in a mind bogglingly huge area of NWT wildfire aftermath All the trees have been reduced to charred cores of trunks with occasional twigs like burned matches. They stick up from a vast expanse of blackened ground, heaped with ash, where stubborn embers still creep and smoke still billows up to form a thick cloying miasma. It's like fog I can profoundly taste even through my N95 mask, and makes my eyes water. It's like that for as far as the eye can see in every direction.
Surrounded By Flames
As I write these words, Canada's Northwest Territories has declared a state of emergency. A 135,000 hectare wildfire is burning out of control less than 20 km Northwest of me here in the capital city of Yellowknife, seven kilometres closer than it was just yesterday. A different fire is approaching from the Southeast, yet another from the Northeast, and a fourth is due North.
Murderous Landlords
By Michael Nabert photoshopped from multiple creative commons images by author Aaron, 28, was an electrician. His fiancee Carissa, 27, was an educational assistant. The couple lived together in a basement apartment in Hamilton Ontario. They approached their landlord, who lived upstairs, with a health and safety concern about mould in their rental unit.
Get Ready For The First Category Seven Hurricane
By Michael Nabert Image by WikiImages on Pixabay Tropical storms get the majority of their power from sea surface temperatures. As a storm travels over the surface of the sea, it picks up ever more heat to fuel its intensity from the surface waters. Heat is the engine that gives a hurricane its incredible...
UCP Post-Election Alberta Healthcare Plans
By Michael Nabert Public figure Danielle Smith and Alberta Health Services logo photoshopped with wrecking ball by author As Alberta Canada's provincial election nears its close, an insider in the ruling UCP party contacted me off the record about the party's plans for health care after the election is over (and assuming they win). I am unable to verify with certainty, and can share no details about this informant without...
You Mean The World To Me
photoshopped together by author from multiple pieces of AI generated art When I visit social media, I never know exactly what I'll see, but I know what to expect. When I'm lucky, a rare glimmer of something distracting or heartwarming sometimes slips into the mix, but a cavalcade of horrors is always reliably on tap. My mood of the moment often colours my response. A new attack on civil rights/the environment/basic decency might leave me furious or...
When Is A Recession Not A Recession?
By Michael Nabert Governments are reluctant to invoke the word recession. It doesn't poll well. Grumblings about widespread and obvious economic hardship need to escalate considerably before political calculus decrees the threshold met to drop the term. Sadly, that doesn't begin a mature, nuanced or informed public discussion...
My Glorious Food Security Delusion
The age of plenty is over. For decades, humanity has grown far more food every year than it would take to ensure that none of Earth’s multitudes ever went to bed hungry even once. Starvation in the world we grew up in only happened because our sharing skills suck. Manipulating food prices to starve hungry people fattens the offshore bank accounts of billionaires. Many of the well fed would rather watch others die than share.
An Open Letter To Every In-Person Invitation
By Michael Nabert Hello, (person or organization) that would like to see me personally appear at (insert event). Since a variety of officials have repeatedly said that it's up to each of us to assess our own Covid risks, I've invested some time in doing exactly that. I'm going to briefly walk you through my findings and my thinking, providing links to 22...
Unpopular Opinion On The Late Queen
After 70 years on the throne, Queen Elizabeth the second has died. Quietly. Perhaps the most recognizable woman on the planet, she was a fixture on the international stage for as far back as most of the world can remember. The mourning has begun. She seemed, at least when seen though the lens of the most aggressively micro managed public relations efforts in history, to be a reasonably nice lady. I like to think that that was true. But it's largely irrelevant to this moment.
The Right's Next Big Lie Is About Fertilizer
By Michael Nabert Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash The fact that weather is directly connected to our ability to grow crops shouldn't be hard to grasp. If you've ever owned even one houseplant, you surely understand that plants can't live without the right growing conditions. Plants thrive in a Goldilocks zone - neither too wet nor too...
Broken Goods
By Michael Nabert It infuriates me that news media are still talking about today's record inflation as if it's somehow a transient anomaly that might be readily corrected before it becomes a full fledged recession. A distressing amount of evidence suggests it's barely the beginning of our top heavy economy finally toppling. Telling us not to worry...
Why The Left Won't Call The Right's Bluff
By Michael Nabert Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash Our world has taken a turn to the hard right, veering towards a cliff's edge that promises a sickening plunge into ecological catastrophe beset by fascist violence all the way down. Right wing extremism is ascendant, disproportionately amplified to an enormous extent on Twitter and Facebook, emboldened and increasingly aggressive.
I'm Glad Gas Prices Are Rising
By Michael Nabert Photo by sippakorn yamkasikorn on Unsplash In chapter one of every Introduction to Economics textbook on the planet, it explains the fundamental idea of a price signal. Prices affect consumer behaviour. If you own a movie theatre, you'll fill more seats if tickets only cost...
Trudeau’s War On Canada’s Oil Industry
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, photo by CBC Canada’s fifteenth prime minister, PierreTrudeau, was in office through the energy crisis of the 1970s, which saw shortages of and inflated prices for petroleum frustrating the public and damaging the nation’s economy. Once the crisis finally passed, he envisioned a way to decouple Canada’s fuel security from uncontrollable factors on the global market.
Refugee Apartheid In Our Short Attention Span World
Refugee Apartheid In Our Short Attention Span World Support for Ukraine is wonderful (while it lasts) but also reveals inherent biases. Photograph of Ukraine under attack by manhhai on Flickr Ukraine’s invasion is awful, a brutal violation of international law and basic human decency with far-reaching consequences. The speed at which nations united to organize sanctions was stunning, and demonstrated more international unity…
Anti Vaxxers Are Exploiting the Homeless To Get Fraudulent Vaccine Passports
Because what’s one more layer of reckless endangerment, right? Photo by Ed Us on Unsplash The vaccine hesitant have been telling us that they’re worried we don’t know what the long term effects of getting repeated doses of new vaccines are. What might the metabolic impact be of someone getting the Covid vaccine ten times in a row, and far more quickly than doctors recommend? We don’t know, but we may be about to find out.
Mass Human Sacrifice
Photoshopped together from various sources by author Instead of trying to defeat Covid, it’s much easier to say that we should just learn to live with it. It means that you can stop trying, stop distancing, stop masking, and just pretend that it isn’t a big deal. It also means saying that we’re totally okay with tens of millions more deaths as long as we can hope that we will personally be among the lucky ones. It’s a eugenics narrative.
Lose The Script
By Michael Nabert Photo by Mikhail Nilov from Pexels Human beings have pattern seeking intelligence. We feel most secure and safe when we know what to expect, and this is so utterly consistent in human behaviour that even when the expected is basically terrible, we tend on the whole to shy away from the unfamiliar. Perhaps that's why we often crave a comfortingly familiar, carefully controlled and scripted concept of our reality. From personal...
How I'll Die, When and Why
By Michael Nabert Photo by Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash Nothing in life is certain, other than death. To live is to experience mortality. This fact terrifies many, but I've never been particularly bothered by the idea that my existence isn't forever. Despite its challenges and frustrations, I've enjoyed an often joyful and consistently interesting life. Celebrating that it happened and making the most...
A Simple Tool For Obliterating Writer’s Block
A Simple Tool For Obliterating Writer’s Block Easily add more surprise and creativity to your writing. Silhouette image from Wikimedia commons, painter’s studio Photo by Matthieu Comoy on Unsplash, photoshop by author Sometimes tapping into the zeitgeist is easy. An event of significance dominates the news cycle and it’s hard to ignore. It makes us feel. Immediately there are a thousand new Medium articles about it. How do you stand out?
Walking Probable Cause
Photo by Bexar Arms on Unsplash An astounding thing took place in the very public trial of Kyle Rittenhouse. The antics of a judge who made absolutely no effort to appear impartial, refused to allow people gunned down in the street to be referred to as victims, and otherwise seemed to forget that he wasn’t the defence attorney are enough to merit a few articles all on their own, but that’s not where I’m going today.
Walking Probable Cause
Photo by Bexar Arms on Unsplash An astounding thing took place in the very public trial of Kyle Rittenhouse. The antics of a judge who made absolutely no effort to appear impartial, refused to allow people gunned down in the street to be referred to as victims, and otherwise seemed to forget that he wasn’t the defence attorney are enough to merit a few articles all on their own, but that’s not where I’m going today.
Why the Health Care You Remember Isn’t Coming Back
Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash Nietzcshe famously proclaimed that “that which does not kill you makes you stronger,” but we all know that isn’t necessarily true. It’s equally possible for a car accident that doesn’t kill you to leave you a paraplegic, or for the psychological effects of a severe trauma to impede you ever after. When we get hurt, our bodies try to heal themselves.
Why the Health Care You Remember Isn’t Coming Back
Why the Health Care You Remember Isn’t Coming Back Covid wasn’t a blip, it changed the landscape of health care for the foreseeable future. Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash Nietzcshe famously proclaimed that “that which does not kill you makes you stronger,” but we all know that isn’t necessarily true. It’s equally possible for a car accident that doesn’t kill you to leave you a paraplegic, or for the…
Billionaire "Charity" is Theft, Not Philanthropy
By Michael Nabert Photo by Ben Koorengevel on Unsplash The so-called charity of the wealthy is yet another exercise of power, commonly with the intention to shape public policy. Behind the guise of "philanthropy," it allows private assets to nakedly flex their plutocratic muscles in democratic settings. A...
When We Can't See the Climate for the Trees
By Michael Nabert Tree planting can't offset our emissions, and forests are in big trouble Photo by Trent Haaland on Unsplash Trees were supposed to save us, at least if we listened to climate Pollyannas about them. To make ourselves feel better about our long haul international flights we were told to offset our emissions by paying someone to plant a few trees. That hasn't worked out...
What Climate Change Means For Your Dinner Plans
And other reasons we’d better get ready to be hungry. Photo by Pablo Merchán Montes on Unsplash Got plans for dinner? They may change. Or vanish. Climate change is only one of the reasons we are about to enter a new age of hunger. But let’s start with climate change, because that’s becoming increasingly hard to ignore, and it’s the biggest short term factor reshaping our menu.
Precocious child and dad talk about Universal Basic Income - a comic
Researching a road map from our imperilled world into one with a livable future with as much good humour as I can muster along the way.
The tyranny of crap examples
By Michael Nabert Examples are important. They provide context through comparison. Sometimes that comparison illuminates. Sometimes the opposite. Sometimes very deliberately the opposite. So here's the thing: doing things well can be hard. Conveniently, any mediocre performance can look awesome if you can...
Bring on the $1000 carbon price
By Michael Nabert Whatever your goal is, it helps to have the right tools. To dig a trench, a spade is better than a spoon, but a backhoe is better than both. Most complex goals require more than one tool. A carpenter needs a saw, but won't get far without also having a hammer, drill and so on. Tools are a lot less useful without knowing how...
Criminal Impunity in America
By Michael Nabert Imagine that the law had severe penalties for many different kinds of crime - assault, rape, murder, and so on - but no effective penalty whatsoever for certain other crimes, like, let's say, arson. Your boss pisses you off so much that you fantasize about punching him in the face, but an assault charge...
Yes, You Can Shop on a Bike
Yes, You Can Shop on a Bike Being an effective City Councillor requires humility to recognize you don't know everything, openness to others' lived experience, imagination to see possible alternative futures, and compassion for people who aren't exactly like you.
LRT: Let's Reduce Taxes
LRT: Let's Reduce Taxes Instead of focusing on the critical issues facing Hamilton, this election is mired in a debate that has already been decided many times before. By Sean Hurley Published September 13, 2018 The current municipal election is about light rail transit (LRT). That's unfortunate because Hamilton's housing crisis should really be the main election issue. The second most important topic ought to be road safety.
Hamilton Needs LRT to Grow Out of Our Infrastructure Hole
Hamilton Needs LRT to Grow Out of Our Infrastructure Hole Without LRT, we are a city adrift with no Plan B to get our finances in order. Killing LRT now would send a devastating message to the world that Hamilton is a reckless and unreliable place to invest.
LRT: Let's Reduce Traffic
LRT: Let's Reduce Traffic Light Rail can carry up to four times as many commuters per lane as automobiles. By Ryan McGreal Published September 18, 2018 Last week, RTH published a compelling article by Sean Hurley titled, LRT: Let's Reduce Taxes. That article, in turn, inspired Kevin Love to write a thoughtful companion piece titled, LRT: Let's Reduce Trauma. And that, in turn, inspired me to round out the trilogy with a third "T" that LRT helps reduce.
We Need Light Rail to Grow Our Tax Base, Reduce Our Infrastructure Liability
We Need Light Rail to Grow Our Tax Base, Reduce Our Infrastructure Liability Please don't fool yourself into thinking Council can kill the goose and keep collecting the golden eggs.
LRT: Let's Reduce Trauma
LRT: Let's Reduce Trauma The total cost of building the B-Line LRT is about equal to the financial cost of deaths, injuries and property damage caused by motor vehicle operators each and every year. By Kevin Love Published September 14, 2018 On September 13, 2018, Raise the Hammer published an article from Sean Hurley entitled, "LRT: Let's Reduce Taxes." Thank you, Sean, for this excellent argument.
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