Why Did Canadian Media Help Loblaw Promote Their PR Stunt?: Yesterday morning, Loblaw announced — through an email to customers from company president and chairman, Galen Weston, a corporate statement, and a press release — that they’d be freezing price caps until Jan. 31, 2023, on items from no name, one of their many food brands.

The rationale offered by Weston for the move was clever. He pointed
out that inflation on food costs has been skyrocketing, making families
uncertain about how they’ll be able to afford groceries. He portrayed
the price freeze as a way to help them out. Naturally, a skeptical
person would reply to Weston by asking why his corporation set the
prices so high in the first place. And to this, Weston preemptively
argues that, “Maddeningly, much of this is out of our control,” adding
that the corporation has supposedly challenged any “unfair price
increases” but that “the truth is, most are reasonable.” As such, Weston
can give the impression that his company has been held hostage by
outside forces, but is now taking a personal hit because they care about
the well being of Canadians so much.

This is absolutely not the case. Luckily, we have a whole media
apparatus that can provide critical reporting on these claims, helping
readers make sense of what’s really going on, right? In theory, yes. In
practice, we’re not so fortunate. And the coverage of Weston’s
announcement proves it, with Canadian media helping one of the richest
families and largest corporations in the country to get free PR.

All that plastic in the ocean is a climate change problem, too: When you think of plastic pollution, you might imagine ocean “garbage patches”
swirling with tens of millions of plastic bottles and shopping bags.
But unfolding alongside the “macroplastic” pollution crisis is another
threat caused by much smaller particles: microplastics.

Microplastics — tiny plastic fragments that are less than 5
millimeters in diameter, a little less than one-third the size of a dime
— have become ubiquitous in the environment. They form when larger
plastic items like water bottles, grocery bags, and food wrappers are
exposed to the elements, chipping into smaller and smaller pieces as
they degrade. Smaller plastic fragments can get down into the nano
territory, spanning just 0.000001 millimeter — a tiny fraction of the
width of a human hair.

These plastic particles do many of the same bad things that larger
plastic items do: mar the land and sea, leach toxic chemicals into the
food chain. But scientists are increasingly worried about their
potential impact on the global climate system. Not only do microplastics
release potent greenhouse gases as they break down, but they also may be inhibiting one of the world’s most important carbon sinks, preventing planet-warming carbon molecules from being locked away in the seafloor.

Matt Simon, a science journalist for Wired, details the danger in his forthcoming book on microplastics, A Poison Like No Other.
He told Grist that it’s still early days for some of this research but
that the problem could be “hugely important going forward.”

To understand the potential magnitude, you first have to understand an ocean phenomenon called the “biological carbon pump.” This process — which involves a complex network of physical, chemical, and biological factors — sequesters up to 12 billion metric tons of carbon at the bottom of the ocean each year, potentially locking away one-third of humanity’s annual emissions. Without this vital system, scientists estimate that atmospheric CO2 concentrations, which recently hit a new record high of 421 parts per million, could be up to 250 parts per million higher.    

Is Canada facing recession? Freeland says fall fiscal update will reflect gathering storm – National | Globalnews.ca:

Canada is facing some “difficult days ahead,” but whether or not the government expects the economy to tip into recession will be reflected in the feds’ upcoming fall forecast, Chrystia Freeland says.

Speaking in Windsor, Ont., on Wednesday afternoon, the finance
minister and deputy prime minister told reporters that Ottawa will share
with “some precision” its projections for the economy in its fall
economic statement. Freeland did not specify when the statement will be
released, but said Ottawa will be sharing a date for it in the “days to
come.”

Earlier in the day, Freeland said in a speech an economic slowdown was coming for the world and that Canada has the fiscal capacity to get through the “challenging days” ahead.

“There are still some difficult days ahead for Canada’s economy and for the economies of all of our friends and allies around the world,” she said.

“We
are ensuring that Canada has and will have the fiscal capacity to
support those who need it today and in the challenging days ahead. We
will get through the economic slowdown that is coming for Canada and the
world.”