In Toronto there's a giant cooling system for downtown buildings that uses cold lake water pumped downtown from 83m underwater:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Lake_Water_Cooling_System.
It's being expanded to offer even more cooling with a low carbon footprint.
I'd like to take up a different view on this issue, in the hope that this discussion helps to understand this issue from a different vantage point. Neither of us make any rules for anyone else, so this is an academic discussion anyway. I hope you're not offended by the disagreement, as it's driven only by an interest in moving toward a better position on this issue, not internet points or personal malice (& you're using a pseudonym anyway). At the moment, I don't read in this comment what seems like the right answer, but it's also a short version, and maybe my own thoughts on this are wrong - thank you at the very least for posting this, as it's given me an opportunity to think more about a different position. Below is a different point of view.
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Many people do not even do the "bare minimum" as a member of society, and they should be treated, to the greatest degree possible, like the people who do the maximum, or even just the usual. High-tax paying people, beloved teachers, famous artists, despised criminals - they should all be treated as humans, with the appropriate medical treatment according to their human needs, not their moral failures or victories.
People are the product of society, and a component in it, and they should not be judged by stereotypes, or even judged at all, when it comes to responding to their medical needs. Ideally, we'd take this approach in every area of life, but this is especially justified when applied to injured and sick people. "Misguided" is a more useful frame for many people than "evil".
Triage by prior behaviour is a poor basis for healthcare. Everyone has their own group of people they like less or more, according to their prior experiences. More importantly, the time to judge someone's moral behaviour is not at the point of healthcare delivery. Even if mistakes never happened, and your moral views are correct and correctly applied, it wouldn't be right to apply this rule because it would be the first step away from neutrality.
The status quo of neutrality is a good rule, even if on rare occasions it results in seriously injured violent criminals receiving medical treatment ahead of sick nuns. Because almost all of the time it's the rule that is the most human, on our best behaviour. And especially so when we consider that many of our own views are not solely attributable to our individual choice but are in fact strongly influenced by our place in society. Once immoral individual behaviour is the yardstick for medical behaviour, perhaps based on views about groups, it's difficult to know when you've strayed off the moral path.
Triage by prior behavior is effectively prioritizing by who got there first. I don't think that's optimal. When hospital resources become limited, I support prioritizing people who took bare minimum steps to prevent being in that situation.
Not to mention the associated dangers to staff that come along with the non-vaccinated population. My sister is an ICU nurse in a C19 ward, and has been threatened many times, screamed at countless times, by families of people with C19. They are all, as near as she can tell, of a certain tribe.
We already triage by behavior - an alcoholic has a lower priority for a liver transplant than a fit man. Your view is idealistic and works when resources are unlimited. When resources are limited, we have to - and already - make decisions like these.
Right, but that in itself doesn't make it a civil system.
If I recall correctly Quebec separates by private and "public" law, so if you get divorced or break up a company it's one system, if you steal from someone, the other.
Who not both? Just because it’s normal that low level workers are fired and get nothing doesn’t mean that’s how it has to be. Severance could be generous enough to make this work out.
The Supreme Court of Canada in 2009 specifically recognized a defence related to defamation as being one that's broader than "journalists" in the sense of employed people who work for the news media, and here's their explanation:
"In arguments before us, the defence was referred to as the responsible journalism test. This has the value of capturing the essence of the defence in succinct style. However, the traditional media are rapidly being complemented by new ways of communicating on matters of public interest, many of them online, which do not involve journalists. These new disseminators of news and information should, absent good reasons for exclusion, be subject to the same laws as established media outlets. I agree with Lord Hoffmann that the new defence is “available to anyone who publishes material of public interest in any medium”"
This explanation is an answer to the question of who's a "legitimate journalist", which is that it should be about what people are doing not who they work for. That's an idea captured in the above case, which reviews some of the laws of other countries on this subject too. It was in the context of defamation, but it's closely linked to your comments about accountability (since the everyday threat is lawsuits, not assault/arrest).
Wouldn't that be a great outcome? Cheap cars or cheap cola? That's better than more expensive products (because of the cost of advertising that's turned into billboards and banner ads.)
Rules on paper aren’t rules in reality. Enforcement of law, and the way it’s experienced (or not) is far more important than what’s written in the law books, and the enforcement part is much less transparent, and impossible to know at the time the rule is passed.
