I would also love to see more cities take on sidewalk clearing in Ontario. While writing this piece I watched a woman with a walker going along the middle lane of the road because the sidewalks are impassable. It's very frustrating.

I was in Victoria for a wedding in February two years ago and spent 65% of the time trying to convince everyone in my family to move there so I'd have an excuse to

I share your concern on the ferry front.

I'm curious though what makes the BC Transit to BC Ferries relationship especially important? Wouldn't it just be a case of BC Transit increasing frequency to match additional ferry departures? Is there something more complicated going on?

I like that you checked!

“I had many conversations with people who arrived in Victoria, saw the mountains and the ocean and the sunshine and then concluded that the city’s best feature was the comparative ease of finding a parking space.” 🤣

Forgive me for tagging a few people who might enjoy: @dtkmelissa.bsky.social @jmcelroy.bsky.social @philmarfisi.bsky.social @amoralorealis.bsky.social

Canada has exactly one city with good weather and it’s too tiny Or how to cure thousands of Canadians of Seasonal Affective Disorder

YIMBYs and urbanists often make the point that you should let people live where they want: near jobs, schools and amenities. I'd like to make a special case for Canada: we should let people live where the weather is good!

open.substack.com/pub/carboncr...

Canada has exactly one city with good weather and it’s too tiny Or how to cure thousands of Canadians of Seasonal Affective Disorder

carboncreatures.substack.com/p/canada-has...

Some wonderful turns of phrase in this Victoria #yimby piece by
@sethwynes.bsky.social #bcpoli #yyjpoli

Will we get robots before the Amazon collapses? Grappling with AI timelines as a climate researcher

I wrote a post comparing climate and AI timelines. I'm curious as to whether other people see these risks as interacting? Or perhaps one coming well before the other? Would love to hear people's thoughts! carboncreatures.substack.com/p/will-we-ge...

Will we get robots before the Amazon collapses? Grappling with AI timelines as a climate researcher

I wrote a post comparing climate and AI timelines. I'm curious as to whether other people see these risks as interacting? Or perhaps one coming well before the other? Would love to hear people's thoughts! carboncreatures.substack.com/p/will-we-ge...

Why Aldo Leopold founded environmentalism instead of wild animal welfare On warm dogs and cold chickadees

Hi folks, I'm starting a Substack newsletter! I'm mostly going to focus on my research on climate change, AI safety, and my thoughts on wild animal welfare.

The first post is up and I'd love if you took a look:

open.substack.com/pub/carboncr...

One such adjustment: we should no longer refer to climate change as the central challenge of our time. More here: osf.io/preprints/so...

Global surface temperature change relative to pre-industrial times (A), and task duration that state-of-the-art AI systems can complete with 50% reliability (B). Note the logarithmic y-axis in Panel B. Task duration estimates are from METR (Kwa et al., 2025). Forecasted artificial general intelligence (AGI) range includes lower 25%, median, and upper 75% estimates from forecasting platform Metaculus as of December 2025. Climate data from IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report SPM.4 (a) and Figure 3.3(a)(IPCC, 2024).

New preprint: Climate Research Agendas Should Account for Anticipated AI Risks. I argue that AI timelines are shorter than climate timelines and since climate research is unique in focusing on such long horizons, this requires some adjustments from climate folks.

Our new study (Chaplin-Kramer et al., 2025) found wildlife play critical roles in nature’s benefits to people. Wildlife’s contributions to people (WCP) support nature’s contributions to people (NCP) through actions like predation, herbivory, scavenging, and ecosystem engineering. Wild animals directly and indirectly support services such as habitat creation, climate regulation, pollination, food production, and cultural identity. Graphic designed by Sylvia Heredia.

Our new study* finds wildlife support 2/3 of nature's contributions to people, from hunting and fishing to art and music to birds eating crop pests. #Biodiversity & #conservation must include animals!

Read more: wecanfixit.substack.com/p/localize

* @beckyck.bsky.social, @natrevbiodiv.bsky.social

It's not more upsetting than the trade war, but it was more surprising

Great resource for those tracking EV uptake

Love how it's formally called "Congestion Relief Zone." Words matter.

Will RFK Ban Lab-Grown Meat? Trump’s first administration supported it. But now there’s a new crowd coming into town.

"The timing is brutal for a potentially climate-friendly new industry that had hoped to start competing with conventional meat in 2025."

What happens when the cultivated meat industry meets Trump 2.0? @mikegrunwald.bsky.social tackles that question below, feat. @chefsuzigerber.bsky.social:

To test this, we ran a survey experiment on a nationally representative sample of 6,000 people in the U.S.

We elicited ethical beliefs, provided info about either a new conventional, cultured or veg substitute, showed a video clip about factory farming, & re-elicited beliefs. 6/

Does technology affect ethical beliefs?

Some have argued that ethical beliefs are nested in culture, and culture can be affected by one's economic environment. 1/

I think this probably plays some role. Might also be that residents are more supportive of speed cameras than voters and especially moreso than those who vote in local elections.

Ontario's grid is pretty clean. It would be more meaningful if you lived in Alberta. Still helpful though and like you said, pretty smart choice except for the rare load where you're worried about pests.

Would like to see numbers for this. I've always thought that setting your washing machine to cold is pretty good bang for your buck considering it's zero effort. But it does depend on where your energy comes from.

How do carbon taxes affect food prices? In our latest paper, @dr_jen_winter and I analyze both direct and indirect impacts across the entire food supply chain: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm

It's the most detailed exploration of CTaxes and food yet! 🤓 #cdnecon #cdnpoli

Animal welfare The achievement of high welfare standards is paramount throughout the whole production chain, on the farm, during transport and finally at the abattoir.

Any thoughts on whether this will create conflicts with Denmark's progress on farmed animal welfare (e.g. more incentive to increase stocking rates etc.)? agricultureandfood.dk/danish-agric...

Alright I may give it a try!

Does it add a lot of value over an old-fashioned game of Mafia?

We hope that this study will give climate researchers a better understanding of the range of beliefs held by the greater community and allow for more informed discussion about where our climate is headed.

We also asked these climate experts to estimate the beliefs of their peers. There were strong correlations on all questions, suggesting that participants with very high or low estimates perceive their own beliefs as closer to the community average than they actually are.

We expected that researchers who worked on solutions (WG3) might be more optimistic than those working on adaptation (WG2), but found limited support for this hypothesis (differences were only significant between WG2 and WG3 for estimates of the likelihood of reaching 3°C)