Category: The Conversation – Canada

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Oriane Couchoux, Assistant Professor of Accounting, Carleton University

Mothers aren’t just losing the income, promotions and career advancements that we’ve known about for quite some time. They’re also quietly spending their own money, absorbing more day-to-day costs and making financial sacrifices that place them at a long-term disadvantage.

We already knew about the impact of motherhood on women’s income. A 2015 study by Statistics Canada shows that mothers earn 85 cents for every dollar earned by fathers. Ten years after the birth of their first child, mothers’ earnings are still around 34.3 per cent lower than they would have been without children.

But our research also reveals that women’s relationship with money is rewired with motherhood and that having children changes their financial decisions and spending habits.

Study participants describe two competing narratives when discussing their personal finances. On the one hand, they view motherhood as a financial project they must manage independently, within the limits of budgets and cost-benefit considerations. On the other hand, they also see motherhood as a role that requires financial sacrifice, where children’s needs and well-being take priority over all financial considerations.

The true cost of motherhood

Motherhood comes with a price. Studies have shown that becoming a mother negatively affects women’s finances and career.

Some research suggests that among other changes, their colleagues might start to perceive their competence and commitment to their professional work less favourably. Mothers also face intensified work-life balance pressures, often leading to part-time employment.

Women are 19 times more likely than men to cite “caring for children” as the primary reason for working part-time.

But beyond the well-documented motherhood penalty — the name given by social scientists to this phenomenon of workplace disadvantages — and the impact of motherhood on women’s income, our qualitative study reveals that motherhood alters the relationship women have with money.

We interviewed mothers living in the Canadian province of Québec to better understand how they manage their finances after having children, and found that motherhood reshapes how mothers spend and think about money.

When asked about how they manage expenses related to their children, participants in our study said they feel they must navigate competing societal expectations that drive them to juggle two narratives — seeing the financial aspect of motherhood as, one, a project to manage, and, two, as a sacrifice to make for their children.

Taking on the role of financial strategist

Mothers, on one hand, strive to be autonomous financial managers capable of developing financial strategies and making decisions considered economically responsible for their families.

As a study participant described:

“Everything goes through my account, I manage everything. I like it that way too. I’m a very meticulous person […] I like to be in control of the budget.”

This leads them to create “baby budgets,” tracking and comparing the prices of different diaper brands in spreadsheets, or setting up savings strategies for their children’s potential future education.

This vision of themselves as independent financial managers, coupled with their desire to fully take on the financial responsibilities of having children, sometimes leads participants in our study to shoulder certain child-related expenses on their own without sharing full details with their co-parent or asking the co-parent to contribute to everyday costs such as food, clothing or family activities.

Another person in the study explained:

“I know that I buy more things for the children. I put them on my card so I know that there are more expenses that I incur as extras … But, at the same time, that’s what I like. I love shopping for them. It’s a gift for me too. But sometimes, I find it a little annoying. I really devote myself a lot to the family, buying things for the house, the family.”

The cultural script of maternal self-sacrifice

Mothers also see themselves as the primary caregivers responsible for making financial sacrifices for their children.

Within this narrative, participants in our study tend to believe that being a good mother means putting their children first, doing everything possible to ensure their happiness and well-being and not tracking the time and money they devote.

As another shared:

“That’s what being a good mom is all about […] you can’t count that. You don’t count the time, being present, taking care of them, the activities, the clothes, everything. You don’t count the expenses, you’re the person they go to.”

This can lead mothers, for example, to put their children’s future ahead of their own, prioritizing education savings or splurging on non-essential items they believe will make their children happy over their own retirement.

This view of motherhood that normalizes financial sacrifice also appears in mothers’ reluctance to calculate the full cost of raising their children and the overall impact of these expenses on their own financial situation, as if determining the amount of money spent on a child were somehow incompatible with the maternal ideal of selfless devotion.

Gender inequality’s long-term financial fallout

This shift in women’s financial perspective highlights some factors behind the persistent gaps between women’s and men’s personal finances. In Canada, the gender pension gap is at about 17 per cent, meaning that “for every dollar of retirement income men receive, women get only 83 cents”.

The additional mental load carried by mothers doesn’t just cost them time and energy, it takes a real toll on their budgets too.

In fact, financial burdens can fall unevenly within couples and between co-parents. Many participants said that they focus on shouldering the financial responsibilities of motherhood independently, no matter the impact on their finances or the contribution from the other parent.

Over time, all of this can contribute to reduced savings and lowered retirement security for mothers, reinforcing the disparities in wealth accumulation and the gender pension between men and women.

Our findings highlight that the true cost of motherhood goes beyond what meets the eye and the need for a broader recognition of the financial labour that mothers bear. We, as a society, must better support them.

Oriane Couchoux received funding from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Centre for Research on Inclusion at Work (CRIW) at the Sprott School of Business, Carleton University, Canada.

Gabrielle Patry-Beaudoin received funding from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Centre for Research on Inclusion at Work (CRIW) at the Sprott School of Business, Carleton University, Canada.

– ref. Motherhood changes how women spend, save and think about money – https://theconversation.com/motherhood-changes-how-women-spend-save-and-think-about-money-268737

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Alison McAfee, Postdoctoral Fellow, Applied Ecology, University of British Columbia; North Carolina State University

When the results of the Canada’s national honey bee colony loss survey were published in July 2025, they came as no surprise. According to the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists, an estimated 36 per cent of Canada’s 830,000 honey bee colonies had perished over the winter.

These figures used to make headlines. But after almost two decades of the same story ― colonies dying in the winter, beekeepers struggling to rebuild, somewhat succeeding, rinse and repeat ― the sad statistics are no longer news, and we are still working out why the cycle persists.

Now, we might be having a light-bulb moment. My colleague Abigail Chapman and I recently found that queen honey bees are infected with viruses that compromise their fertility and may get them ousted from their colonies. And that’s meaningful, because “poor queens” is the top-ranked cause of colony losses reported by Canadian beekeepers.

The life of a queen

A typical honey bee colony has a single queen at the helm, and she is solely responsible for laying thousands of eggs per day ― more than her own body weight ― to grow and replenish the colony’s population for years.

A healthy, productive queen also secretes pheromones that, like a chemical bouquet, signal her quality to the workers (sterile females who make up most of the colony’s population).

The queen cannot afford to get sick. She already barely has time to sleep, and the colony depends on her to remain reproductive. But she may indeed become sick.

Queen “autopsies” point to viruses

Our surveys of queens from members of the British Columbia Bee Breeders’ Association showed that “failing” (poor quality, unproductive) queens had a higher viral burden than their healthy counterparts. That is, they were either infected with more viruses, had more intense infections, or both. The failing queens also had smaller ovaries, a sign they could be less fertile.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean that viruses were the culprit or that queens were sick, per se. They could have been failing for other reasons that also made them more susceptible to infection.

So, Chapman designed an experiment to take a closer look. She infected queens with two common honey bee viruses, then measured the queens’ egg-laying activity and the mass of their ovaries.

Not only did the infected queens lay fewer eggs per day, they were less likely to lay eggs at all when compared with controls, at least during the monitoring period, despite all queens laying normally before the experiment. When we saw that the infected queens also had shrunken ovaries, just like the queens supplied by B.C. beekeepers, we knew we were onto something.

In the apiary, too, infected queens had problems. The worse a queen’s infection was, the more likely her workers were to begin rearing a replacement ― a process known as “supersedure.” If the upcoming replacement queen reaches adulthood, she will normally duel any other queen to the death, mate and become the new conveyor of eggs.

The workers’ dilemma

Superseding colonies are over three times more likely to perish when compared with healthy colonies, in part because there is no guarantee that the new queen will successfully mate. But from the workers’ perspective, supersedure is a necessary risk. If the old queen is compromised, producing a new one is the colony’s best chance at survival.

Normally, the queen produces and secretes a retinue pheromone — a blend of at least nine different chemical components — that, among other functions, inhibits workers from replacing her if all is well. But if one or more of those cues is disrupted by a viral infection, that could act like a red flag, we reasoned, signalling to the workers that the queen can’t lay her weight.

Our new data shows that this is the very process underlying the workers’ drive to replace infected queens. The infections caused a deficiency in methyl oleate ― one flower in the queen’s bouquet. This change encourages the workers to begin raising a new queen.

From beekeeper to queenkeeper

This validates beekeepers’ reports of having “queen issues” when infection levels are high and supports murmurs of queens not lasting as long as they used to. There are many other reasons why a queen may sputter, including pesticide exposure, extreme temperatures, poor mating and more. But viruses are a universal problem, and we did not previously understand the extent to which they could compromise queens.

Now that we do, colonies can be managed differently to better support the queen. There are currently no treatment options for honey bee viruses and there is a real need for commercial products, but luckily, there is still a way to act. Viruses are spread and sometimes amplified by varroa, a parasitic mite that can thankfully be controlled.

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Read more:
Deadlier than varroa, a new honey-bee parasite is spreading around the world

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Varroa treatments ― which must be conducted two to three times per year to keep colonies alive ― already keep beekeepers up at night. Some may want to surrender at the thought of needing to be even more diligent.

But until an antiviral is developed and brought to market, stepping up varroa control is likely the best defence for keeping queens healthy and bringing down colony losses. Pollination of our fruits, nuts and seeds will depend on it.

Alison McAfee receives funding from Project Apis m. She is affiliated with the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists and the British Columbia Honey Producers’ Association.

– ref. Worker honey bees can sense infections in their queen, leading to revolt – https://theconversation.com/worker-honey-bees-can-sense-infections-in-their-queen-leading-to-revolt-269054

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By George S. Rigakos, Professor of the Political Economy of Policing, Carleton University

Baseball in Canada is thriving, from the grassroots to the professional level.

Recent Toronto Blue Jays viewership numbers have been extraordinary, youth participation continues to climb, elite player showcasing and recruiting is expanding — and a new 19U national championship has just been announced by Baseball Canada.

When I’m not researching or writing about policing and security — an area requiring reflection about the interplay of structures, power and bureaucracy — I devote my energies to doing my small part to help the state of baseball in Canada, both as general manager of the Carleton Ravens baseball team and as a researcher.

I helped found the Ottawa chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research, co-authored a peer-reviewed article for the Baseball Research Journal and have reflected on the state Canadian university baseball for the Canadian Baseball Network.

My research and experience points to an an unavoidable conclusion: university baseball in Canada is shaped less by a lack of interest than by a series of persistent organizational barriers.

Formal recognition lacking

To start, outside Ontario, no major university sport body formally recognizes baseball.

University teams in Atlantic and Western Canada operate only because coaches and students organize their own schedules, pay their own way and operate outside the formal sport-administration structure that supports varsity teams. The notable exception is the UBC Thunderbirds, who play in the U.S.-based National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics.

The bodies overseeing university sport in Western Canada, the Maritimes and Québec don’t sanction or host university baseball in any capacity.

A three-game season

While Ontario University Athletics (OUA) formally recognizes university baseball, the organization’s official university baseball schedule is woeful, consisting of three, maybe four games. Under the OUA structure, the only sanctioned competition is a single regional weekend in October, followed by an underwhelming two-game provincial championship for the four teams that win their regions. This represents the entire formal university baseball calendar in Ontario.

A team that doesn’t move past the regional stage, therefore, completes its entire OUA “season” in one weekend.

This would be extraordinary for any major sport, but it is especially remarkable in baseball: a game built around long schedules, repeat matchups and consequential sample sizes. The 20 or more games that teams actually do play in September and early October are not acknowledged by the OUA in any formal way.

There are no official standings, statistics, athlete profiles or an official league website. For most of the fall, university baseball effectively takes place outside the provincial athletic system.

Held together by volunteers

Because the OUA acknowledges only a small fraction of the schedule, coaches organize every game, secure fields, arrange umpires, co-ordinate travel and compile statistics that are published by yet another savvy volunteer.

Some programs receive modest institutional support; most rely on player fees. Some Ontario universities treat baseball as varsity sport while most classify it as a “club” or “varsity club.”

By contrast, for student athletes participating in the three other major Canadian sports — hockey, football and basketball — established provincial and national structures provide visibility, scheduling and predictable competitive pathways.

Baseball’s exclusion from the varsity system in Ontario and its complete absence from university athletics bodies in the remainder of the country simply does not square with fan interest and participation.

Despite its tremendous popularity, baseball has been treated as the odd man out.

Baseball athlete exodus

This structural absence contributes to the large number of athletes who leave the country to pursue collegiate competition. According to data compiled by the Canadian Baseball Network for 2025, 1,187 Canadian baseball players are currently competing at U.S. colleges across NCAA, NAIA and junior college levels.

To put this into some perspective, Canadian collegiate baseball rosters typically carry about 25 to 30 athletes. The Canadians now playing south of the border therefore represent approximately 45 fully rostered university and college baseball teams.

Even if only a small fraction of these players remained in Canada, it would dramatically expand the competitive landscape and provide enough depth for a robust college and university system. As I wrote this article, there were only 26 recognized university programs competing in Canada.

The cost of this exodus is not merely athletic. Canadian colleges and universities are currently facing a serious financial crisis.

Assuming an average annual undergraduate tuition of $7,573 per year, the Canadian student-athletes now playing baseball at U.S. colleges represent up to $36 million dollars in foregone four-year domestic tuition revenue alone.

This is not simply a story of elite prospects seeking professional opportunities. Many players leave because there is no structured, visible or reliable university baseball pathway at home.

A dead zone

Even so, the experience of university baseball is meaningful to those who play.

Coaches, managers and other volunteers record results, manage schedules and transform the fall season into consequential competition, counting the results toward qualification for a grassroots championship involving teams from Ontario, Québec and the Maritimes.

The broader problem is institutional. Public interest is high, youth development is strong and the talent exists in abundance. University baseball in Canada is active, committed and culturally meaningful — but left outside the structures that ordinarily support and sustain collective achievement, it struggles to thrive.

In sociological terms, it operates in a state once described by the late, great social anthropologist David Graeber: a “dead zone.”

For Graeber, a “dead zone” is fostered when a system creates obstacles that frustrate and silence people, effectively making them unseen. Often these zones operate outside formal rules, and are dependent on unpaid labour. As a consequence, they’re prone to crises and collapse.

How could this change?

Despite the apparent fragility of the current system, change would be neither complicated nor costly. Indeed, as we have noted, a “rogue” national championship already exists.

In late October, coaches from Ontario, Québec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia organize their own Canadian “national” tournament, selecting teams, setting the schedule and administering the entire event.

Teams from Alberta and B.C. compete in the Canadian College Baseball Conference with a different calendar. A fuller national tournament — a “Canadian University World Series” — could incorporate these teams, even by using final placement from the previous year as a qualifier if necessary.

In a 2019 research paper, statistics student Mitchell Thompson and I explored the utility of a simple mathematical model used in NCAA baseball to determine “at-large” qualifiers and seeding for their College World Series.

We examined how useful the NCAA’s Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) would be for a potential Canadian University World Series, which would see teams across Canada compete for a national championship.

Nothing, of course, beats head-to-head qualifiers but most programs currently lack the resources for athletes and staff to travel on short notice. Any viable system will therefore have to respect limits of time, distance and funding.

But what’s missing is not data, talent or competitive interest. It’s a willingness by provincial sport organizations, Baseball Canada and, most importantly, universities to build and resource a structure that addresses their shared constraints.

At this point, even modest institutional co-ordination would move university baseball out of its current dead zone and into a system where student-athletes could be seen, recognized and supported.

George S. Rigakos is affiliated with the Carleton University Ravens baseball team but writes here as an independent researcher. His views are his own and do not represent Carleton University or Carleton University Athletics.

– ref. Baseball in Canada is thriving — but not on campus – https://theconversation.com/baseball-in-canada-is-thriving-but-not-on-campus-269785

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Simon Blanchette, Lecturer, Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University

Artificial intelligence is fascinating, transformative and increasingly woven into how we learn, work and make decisions.

But for every example of innovation and efficiency — such as the custom AI assistant recently developed by an accounting professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal — there’s another that underscores the need for oversight, literacy and regulation that can keep pace with the technology and protect the public.

A recent case in Montréal illustrates this tension. A Québec man was fined $5,000 after submitting “cited expert quotes and jurisprudence that don’t exist” to defend himself in court. It was the first ruling of its kind in the province, though similar cases have occurred in other countries.

AI can democratize access to learning, knowledge and even justice. Yet without ethical guardrails, proper training, expertise and basic literacy, the very tools designed to empower people can just as easily undermine trust and backfire.

Why guardrails matter

Guardrails are the systems, norms and checks that ensure artificial intelligence is used safely, fairly and transparently. They allow innovation to flourish while preventing chaos and harm.

The European Union became the first major jurisdiction to adopt a comprehensive framework for regulating AI with the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, which came into force in August 2024. The law divides AI systems into risk-based categories and rolls out rules in phases to give organizations time to prepare for compliance.

The act makes some uses of AI unacceptable. These include social scoring and real-time facial recognition in public spaces, which were banned in February.

High-risk AI used in critical areas like education, hiring, health care or policing will be subject to strict requirements. Starting in August 2026, these systems must meet standards for data quality, transparency and human oversight.

General-purpose AI models became subject to regulatory requirements in August 2025. Limited-risk systems, such as chatbots, must disclose that users are interacting with an algorithm.

The key principle is the higher the potential impact on rights or safety, the stronger the obligations. The goal is not to slow innovation, but to make it accountable.

Critically, the act also requires each EU member state to establish at least one operational regulatory sandbox. These are controlled frameworks where companies can develop, train and test AI systems under supervision before full deployment.

For small and medium-sized enterprises that lack resources for extensive compliance infrastructure, sandboxes provide a pathway to innovate while building capacity.

Canada is still catching up on AI

Canada has yet to establish a comprehensive legal framework for AI. The Artificial Intelligence and Data Act was introduced in 2022 as part of Bill C-27, a package known as the Digital Charter Implementation Act. It was meant to create a legal framework for responsible AI development, but the bill was never passed.

Canada now needs to act quickly to rectify this. This includes strengthening AI governance, investing in public and professional education and ensuring a diverse range of voices — educators, ethicists, labour experts and civil society — are involved in shaping AI legislation.

A phased approach similar to the EU’s framework could provide certainty while supporting innovation. The highest-risk applications would be banned immediately, while others face progressively stricter requirements, giving businesses time to adapt.

Regulatory sandboxes could help small and medium-sized enterprises innovate responsibly while building much needed capacity in the face of ongoing labour shortages.

The federal government recently launched the AI Strategy Task Force to help accelerate the country’s adoption of the technology. It is expected to deliver recommendations on competitiveness, productivity, education, labour and ethics in a matter of months.

But as several experts have pointed out, the task force is heavily weighted toward industry voices, risking a narrow view on AI’s societal impacts.

Guardrails alone aren’t enough

Regulations can set boundaries and protect people from harm, but guardrails alone aren’t enough. The other vital foundation of an ethical and inclusive AI society is literacy and skills development.

AI literacy underpins our ability to question AI tools and content, and it is fast becoming a basic requirement in most jobs.

Yet, nearly half of employees using AI tools at work received no training, and over one-third had only minimal guidance from their employers. Fewer than one in 10 small or medium-sized enterprises offer formal AI training programs.

As a result, adoption is happening informally and often without oversight, leaving workers and organizations exposed.

AI literacy operates on three levels. At its base, it means understanding what AI is, how it works and when to question its outputs, including awareness of bias, privacy and data sources. Mid-level literacy involves using generative tools such as ChatGPT or Copilot. At the top are advanced skills, where people design algorithms with fairness, transparency and accountability in mind.

Catching up on AI literacy means investing in upskilling and reskilling that combines critical thinking with hands-on AI use.

As a university lecturer, I often see AI framed mainly as a cheating risk, rather than as a tool students must learn to use responsibly. While it can certainly be misused, educators must protect academic integrity while preparing students to work alongside these systems.

Balancing innovation with responsibility

We cannot ban or ignore AI, but neither can we let the race for efficiency outpace our ability to manage its consequences or address questions of fairness, accountability and trust.

Skills development and guardrails must advance together. Canada needs diverse voices at the table, real investment to match its ambitions and strong accountability built into any AI laws, standards and protections.

More AI tools will be designed to support learning and work, and more costly mistakes will emerge from blind trust in systems we don’t fully understand. The question is not whether AI will proliferate, but whether we’ll build the guardrails and literacy necessary to accommodate it.

AI can become a complement to expertise, but it cannot be a replacement for it. As the technology evolves, so too must our capacity to understand it, question it and guide it toward public good.

We need to pair innovation with ethics, speed with reflection and excitement with education. Guardrails and skills development, including basic AI literacy, are not opposing forces; they are the two hands that will support progress.

Simon Blanchette does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. We can’t ban AI, but we can build the guardrails to prevent it from going off the tracks – https://theconversation.com/we-cant-ban-ai-but-we-can-build-the-guardrails-to-prevent-it-from-going-off-the-tracks-268172

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Juliano Palacios Abrantes, Postdoctoral researcher, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia

This year’s COP30 comes after the international Agreement on Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) finally acquired the required number of ratification votes by United Nations member states.

The treaty, effective from January 2026, is the first global agreement for marine areas beyond national jurisdictions, with a direct reference to climate change risks in its legal text. Its ratification comes at a crucial time for marine environments.

The momentum of COP30 and the BBNJ treaty creates a unique opportunity to further integrate the ocean, particularly the deep sea, into the climate agenda. By connecting the BBNJ under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the 2015 Paris Agreement, UN member states now have the tools to better conserve the deep sea’s biodiversity and its role in the global carbon cycle.

The deeps sea’s role in our climate

The deep sea (areas deeper than 200 metres) covers more than half our planet’s surface and accounts for over 90 per cent of the ocean’s volume. It is Earth’s largest long-term carbon sink.

Since the Industrial Revolution, the deep sea has absorbed roughly 30 per cent of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions and about 90 per cent of excess heat, significantly slowing warming and buffering the planet against even more catastrophic impacts.

The deep sea stores 50 times more carbon than the atmosphere and 20 times more than all terrestrial plants and soils combined. It helps regulate the Earth’s climate and its importance in fighting climate change is immense, stretching from pole to pole.

The polar regions support essential climate functions. The Southern Ocean around Antarctica absorbs approximately 40 per cent of the global oceanic uptake of human-generated carbon. The opposite pole, the Arctic Ocean, is facing some of the most immediate threats from climate change.

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Read more:
A walk across Alaska’s Arctic sea ice brings to life the losses that appear in climate data

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Against this backdrop, COP30 is hosting an unprecedented number of Indigenous people, with around 3,000 participants. Inuit, Sámi, Athabaskan, Aleut, Yupiit and other Arctic and global Indigenous leaders are voicing the need for climate policy to reflect local knowledge, rights and values in line with claims by Arctic states to sovereignty and stewardship.

However, discontent exists given the lack of representation of Indigenous people in COP30 negotiations. More than 70,000 people participated in the parallel People’s Summit which produced the Declaration of the Peoples’ Summit towards COP30. The declaration calls for more equitable solutions to climate change that include Indigenous and other communities.

Indigenous Peoples already co-create scientific management of marine protected areas, such as the Primnoa resedaeformis coral habitats and glass sponge reefs in Nova Scotia. However, more efforts are needed to reach the 30×30 target to designate 30 per cent of the Earth’s land and oceans as protected areas and achieve the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Closing the ocean gap

Recent sessions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have focused on co-ordination across major international agreements like the BBNJ. These sessions, along with the latest vulnerability assessments from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and UNFCCC’s Ocean Climate Change Dialogues, have urged parties to align ocean actions with climate commitments and close measurement and reporting gaps.

In the summer of 2024, Brazil and France started the Blue NDC Challenge, encouraging countries to include ocean-based climate solutions in their National Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Adaptation Plans.

The UNFCCC requires NDCs to increase carbon uptake rather than historical storage to mitigate. Carbon uptake is the process, activity or mechanism by which natural sinks remove CO2 from the atmosphere. On the other hand, National Adaption Plans may protect deep-sea ecosystems and their biological pump roles.

While recent syntheses show that about 75 per cent (97 out of 130 coastal states that have submitted their NDCs) of UN member states now reference marine and coastal actions in their NDCs, the formal mechanisms for implementing adaptation efforts that include the ocean are lagging behind.

Of the roughly 100 climate indicators being considered at COP30 to monitor the progress of the Paris Agreement’s global goal on adaptation, only 14 include marine or ocean dimensions, with the majority focusing on coasts or shallow waters.

Although those with marine dimensions could be extended to include the deep sea, a persistent omission of deep-sea ecosystems risks undermining both mitigation and adaptation goals. While the final indicators are yet to be determined, it’s critical to ensure that deep-sea ecosystems are explicitly incorporated.

The global stocktake — the Paris Agreement’s process to evaluate the world’s climate action progress — determines if countries are meeting goals and identifies gaps. The stocktake must also identify the deep ocean and deep-sea life specifically, and elaborate on appropriate ocean-based climate actions, comparable to elaborations on the need to halt and reverse deforestation and forest degradation.

Supporting the Paris Agreement

Emerging activities, misguidingly branded as helping the energy transition — like deep-sea mining — further threaten oceans by causing irreparable damage to the sea floor and in the water column.

Geoengineering technologies to remove excess CO₂ from the atmosphere are so far costly and ineffective, but may be necessary to meet the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 C target. However, marine-based technologies may disrupt seafloor habitats, alter ocean chemistry and disrupt the natural carbon cycle in unpredictable ways.

The largest uncertainties in future climate projections stem from potential changes in ocean circulation and biological activity that could reduce the ocean sink efficiency. Even if emissions are stopped, a substantial fraction (20 to 40 per cent in some models) of emitted CO₂ will remain in the atmosphere for a millennium or longer, persisting until slow geological processes complete the sequestration.

If deep-sea carbon sinks were to weaken due to these climate-induced changes, CO₂ would accumulate faster in the atmosphere, making the 1.5 target significantly more difficult to achieve. Therefore, the deep ocean’s capacity determines the long-term fate of CO₂ and the ultimate success of the Paris Agreement’s targets.

Acting without a precautionary approach and failing to incorporate Indigenous values could further damage marine ecosystems and increase inequalities. In addition, failing to establish appropriate protocols for research ethics, project implementation and scientific assessments could result in negative outcomes in terms of CO₂ sequestration.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The deep sea and the Arctic must be included in efforts to tackle climate change – https://theconversation.com/the-deep-sea-and-the-arctic-must-be-included-in-efforts-to-tackle-climate-change-269581

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Regan Lipes, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and English, MacEwan University

As an assistant professor of comparative literature, when I ask undergraduate students how they define “Canadian literature,” I get half-hearted answers about it encompassing anything inherently Canadian. They don’t, however, specify which language, if any, they believe Canadian literature must be written in.

I specifically ask this question because — although I teach in an anglophone environment — just as Canadian identities are multilingual, so too is the literature that tells Canada’s stories.

Defining a national literary canon can be complex. But literature written in any language can be Canadian when the experiences it describes are grounded in the realities of life in Canada.

Yiddish literature, though often overlooked, is an example that offers essential Canadian stories that broaden the national canon.

Reflecting multilayered identities

In my literary trends and traditions class, I teach the short story collection Natasha And Other Stories by Canadian author David Bezmozgis. Bezmozgis’s six English-language stories about a young Soviet-born, Russian-speaking, Latvian-Jewish immigrant to Toronto chronicle the gradual cultivation of a Canadian identity.

Students have a much easier time seeing the work of Bezmozgis as Canadian literature, despite the diversity of multilayered cultural influences, because it was written in English. To them, it’s more accessible.

I follow my first question with another: can Canadian literature be written in Yiddish?

This is usually answered with noncommittal shrugs. Some students are unsure whether Yiddish is still a functioning language and are surprised to learn it is the mother tongue of daily life in many communities globally, with 41,000 speakers residing in Canada.

Yiddish, traditionally spoken by Eastern and Central European Jews before the Second World War, has also experienced a renaissance because of growing appreciation for its evocative flair among contemporary culture connoisseurs.

My students were skeptical when I tell them we are going to read Canadian literature that had been translated from Yiddish. I introduce them to Jewish-Canadian writer Chava Rosenfarb, who was recognized by the University of Lethbridge with an honorary doctorate in 2006 for her literary achievements.

Born in Łódź, Poland, in 1923, Rosenfarb has become a core literary figure for the city because of her three-volume novel Tree of Life chronicling the conditions of perpetual struggle in the Łódź Ghetto. In 2023, a street in Łódź, was named after Rosenfarb, underscoring her importance in the Polish literary sphere.

But outside of Yiddish circles in Canada, her poetry and prose were not widely associated with the country’s literary canon for a long time.

Yiddish literature is Canadian

Though Rosenfarb spent most of her adult life in Canada, raising a family in Montréal, it is only in recent years that she is being appreciated for her significant contribution to Canadian literature. Even though it may have limited her audience, she predominantly published her work in Yiddish because it remained the language in which she felt most artistically at home.

Although Rosenfarb’s individual stories have been previously published in Yiddish literary magazines and in separate translations, it was not until In the Land of The Postscript: The Complete Short Stories of Chava Rosenfarb came out in 2023 that we had the author’s short fiction in a single volume for the first time.

Chava Rosenfarb’s daughter, Dr. Goldie Morgentaler — professor emerita at the University of Lethbridge who was honoured with a Canadian Jewish Literary Award for her translation work from Yiddish to English — translated the collection unifying the text with an insightful and synthesizing forward. She finally brought her mother’s short fiction, about the lives of Holocaust survivors rebuilding lives in Montréal, to anglophone audiences.

Rosenfarb’s stories in the collection tackle the philosophical and existential quandaries of the universal human experience, but with a recognizably Canadian backdrop. Her characters grapple with the obstacles of immigration and ongoing displacement while simultaneously navigating the legacy of their Holocaust trauma. The resettlement of survivors contributed significantly to Canadian Jewish culture, and the impact is still present today.

As Morgentaler notes, it is the ever-visible silhouette of Mount Royal in Montréal that reminds Edgia, the title character of “Edgia’s Revenge,” that as a Jew, she is always under the watchful gaze of the dominant Christian power structure. When Lolek, Edgia’s husband, later dies, it is a set of spiral wooden stairs characteristic of Montréal architecture that are to blame for his fall.

These are distinctly local, Montréal-rooted elements of Rosenfarb’s storytelling, and are immediately familiar to readers. Despite being written in Yiddish, these are Canadian stories that depict the lived experiences of a generation of traumatized newcomers.

Translation supports Canadian narratives

A nation’s literature used to be tied to language, but this can no longer be the narrow criterion for defining a canon. Migration, both voluntary and resulting from forcible displacement, has diversified and enriched the chorus of voices that narrate the stories of Canada. And translation makes it possible to appreciate Canadian literature in its diversity of voices.

Despite having written her short fiction in Yiddish, Rosenfarb’s work tells Canadian stories that provide a valuable glimpse into a chapter of the national narrative seldom explored.

After exposing my students to Rosenfarb’s short fiction, I ask them again whether they consider literature written in languages other than those officially recognized by the Canadian government as belonging to the genre of Canadian literature. And without exception, they agree their perspective has changed.

This marks a point in literary studies where scholars are moving past the traditional paradigm of examining national literature through the lens of national languages.

And the growing literary canon is not only stronger for it, it better reflects the country’s cultural reality.

Regan Lipes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What Yiddish literature reveals about Canada’s diverse canon and multilingual identity – https://theconversation.com/what-yiddish-literature-reveals-about-canadas-diverse-canon-and-multilingual-identity-267190

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Laszlo Sarkany, Assistant Professor, Political Science, Western University

Canada has yet to officially throw its support behind the International Criminal Court (ICC), an institution it helped create, against targeted sanctions imposed on several prosecutors and judges by the United States earlier this year.

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Four key staff of the court — including Canadian judge Kimberly Prost — have been sanctioned by President Donald Trump’s administration because of their involvement in investigations related to alleged war crimes committed by American and Israeli officials.

Other allies, including France, Belgium and the European Union have publicly opposed the sanctions, issuing statements in support of the ICC.

Other states have also spoken out out against the sanctions, including Denmark, Finland, Estonia, the Netherlands, Norway, Senegal, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.

Canada has publicly backed Prost, and has recently joined a number of states at the United Nations in supporting the overall work of the court. But Canadian officials have been silent about the American sanctions.

Sanctions fallout

The current wave of sanctions has forced the court to take extraordinary measures, such as paying staff ahead of time and changing email software to openDesk which was developed by the Germany-based Centre for Digital Sovereignty.

Despite these safety measures, the court may not be safe from further punishment. The Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC has speculated the U.S. government may impose further sanctions against the entire organization.

This would mean that any American company — including financial institutions — or even Canadian companies with subsidiaries in the U.S. that deal with the court may be subject to penalties and legal action.

Shielding businesses

Not all is lost, however. There are two legal remedies that could be be used to shield the ICC. Canada and the EU could amend key laws designed to protect companies from such actions, which could significantly aid in the operation of the court.

These include the 1985 Foreign Extra-Territorial Measures Act (FEMA) and its subsequent amendments in Canada, and in the EU, legislation known as the Extraterritorial Blocking Statute (EBS).

A FEMA amendment was passed in 1996 in response to the Helms-Burton Act in the U.S. that prohibited companies from trading or conducting business in Cuba.

FEMA shields Canadian businesses affected by the Helms-Burton Act and contains specific provisions to protect companies from retaliatory action by the U.S. Similarly, the EBS was passed in the European Parliament to shield European companies from American sanctions.

It was introduced initially as a result of the Helms-Burton Act, and then later revised when the U.S. withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018.

Canada and the EU could amend both FEMA and the EBS to ensure that Canadian and European companies are shielded from the effects of American sanctions and can continue to provide key services to the court.

In the case of the EU, most of the ICC’s contractual arrangements with entities like banks, insurers, service providers, technology providers and landlords are with European firms because the court is located in Europe — in The Hague, Netherlands.

Amending the EBS, therefore, would protect these companies from further American sanctions and would ensure they can still provide services to the ICC.

These legal remedies are a proportional response to the U.S. sanctions. They would allow all parties — the U.S. and the ICC’s supporters — to continue to negotiate instead of bringing international criminal justice to a grinding halt.

Ensuring the survival of the ICC

It’s important to note that including the need to shield businesses from U.S. sanctions in any amended legislation in both Canada and the EU legislation isn’t aimed at helping governments in either Cuba or Iran.

The goal is to protect Canadian and European companies from possible legal action or economic fallout if more sanctions are applied. Most importantly, the aim is to ensure that the ICC continues to operate with as little interruption as possible.

Sanctions may have significant effects on businesses, and what’s been identified as Trump’s penchant for “retributive diplomacy” may compel states — and businesses — to think twice before they act.

But FEMA and EBS provide appropriate countermeasures if and when broader U.S. sanctions on the entire ICC are introduced, or if Canadian and European companies unjustifiably suffer due to the imposition of new sanctions.

The ICC is the international organization with the ability to deliver justice and support victims. It’s the “court of last resort” that only gets involved when offending states are unwilling or unable to do so.

National security concerns in the U.S., Canada and the EU stem as much from the committing of mass atrocities as they do from other types of global crimes. That’s why it’s so important for states to support international criminal justice efforts by fulsomely supporting the ICC.

Laszlo Sarkany does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How Canada and the European Union could ensure the survival of the International Criminal Court – https://theconversation.com/how-canada-and-the-european-union-could-ensure-the-survival-of-the-international-criminal-court-269372

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By David Tindall, Professor of Sociology, University of British Columbia

We live in a time often characterized as a polycrisis. One of those crises is human-caused climate change, an issue currently being discussed by delegates at the COP30 climate talks in Belém, Brazil.

Another is disinformation, much of which has been focused on climate change. A third potential crisis comes from the implications of artificial intelligence for society and the planet.

When it comes to AI and climate change, there are a variety of opinions, from the optimistic to the pessimistic and the skeptical. Given the overarching concerns about environmental harms of AI, it is surprising to some that AI is front and centre at COP30, which I am currently attending.

Both COP30 President André Aranha Corrêa do Lago and Simon Stiell, executive director of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, have noted the importance of AI and other aspects of technology for addressing climate change.

While there has been some consideration of AI in addressing climate change at previous COPs, COP30 is the first conference where AI has been formally integrated as a central theme in the conference agenda.

AI at COP30

On the first day of COP30, “science, technology and artificial intelligence” was explicitly listed as one of the key themes. Initiatives included the Green Digital Action Hub, a global platform to drive a greener, more inclusive digital transformation.

Additionally, there was a session introducing the AI Climate Institute. A key goal of the AI Climate Institute is to enable Global South countries to design, adapt and implement their own AI-based climate solutions.

In these and other forums, there were discussions about digital decarbonization technologies and advances in data transparency for emissions. Proponents argued these initiatives were designed to help countries harness technology to meet their climate goals.

When it comes to AI and climate change, there is a tendency for people to think about the increased environmental and climate change harms that AI will bring. In this regard, there has been a lot of recent media coverage on the potential of increased carbon emissions, water use and environmental damage as a result of mining for critical minerals.

A key issue is the emissions produced by data centres. As many commentators have said — including Stiell — data centres need to have electrical power sources if AI is to be aligned with climate action.

How is AI relevant to addressing climate change?

AI is already being applied in climate change mitigation. At COP30, former United States vice president Al Gore gave a presentation about the role of Climate TRACE in addressing climate change. Climate TRACE is a non-profit coalition of organizations that have been developing an inventory of exactly where greenhouse gas emissions are coming from to help governments, organizations and companies to reduce or eliminate these emissions.

Climate TRACE uses satellite imagery, remote sensing, artificial intelligence and machine learning to estimate emissions. In his presentation, Gore demonstrated visual examples in a slide show.

AI can play a role in reducing emissions in a number of ways. One, as noted above, is by tracking emissions. Another is by making energy systems more efficient and thus reducing emissions through energy savings.

Reducing energy use and emissions were not the only type of efficiencies discussed at COP30. Conservation of water use and increased efficiencies in agricultural production were also highlighted. An example is the AI for Climate Action Award that was given to a team from Laos this year for a project using AI for farming and irrigation.

Climate adaptation

AI has the potential to make a big impact in the area of climate adaptation. Key issues were discussed at COP30 at a session called Smarter than the Storm: The Future of AI in Forecasting and Proactive Responses to Build More Resilient Communities.

Scientific research has demonstrated that machine learning can assist local governments in their decisions about options for climate adaptation. AI can be an integral part of an early warning system.

It can be used to predict floods using sensor data, predict wildfires using satellite and weather data, monitor social media for disaster response and identify areas at risk of landslides.

AI tools involved in these various processes include machine learning, deep learning, natural-language processing and computer vision. Consistent with overarching concerns at COP30 about the importance of social and climate justice, proponents of community AI applications emphasized the need for transparency, affordability of data and AI systems and the sovereignty of community data.

Dangers of disinformation

Climate disinformation is a key type of disinformation in contemporary society. AI can either be a source or a counter to climate disinformation.

At COP30, disinformation and climate denial was mentioned in a number of contexts, including by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. One key event on this topic was the announcement of a Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change, which a number of countries endorsed.

AI can be considered a triple-edged sword. Unregulated expansion of AI has the potential to do enormous environmental harm and magnify misinformation and disinformation.

However, principled development of AI, powered by clean energy sources, also has the potential to significantly reduce carbon emissions, provide early warning to communities of climate threats, reduce the costs of adapting to a changing climate and enhance our understanding of climate change.

David Tindall receives funding from from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, a body that funds academic research. He has an affiliation with Cllimate Reality Canada. In this voluntary role he occassionally gives unpaid talks on climate change.

– ref. Artificial intelligence is front and centre at COP30 – https://theconversation.com/artificial-intelligence-is-front-and-centre-at-cop30-269872

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jillian Sunderland, PhD Student , University of Toronto

Across TikTok and university campuses, young men are rewriting what masculinity looks like today, sometimes with matcha lattes, Labubus, film cameras and thrifted tote bags.

At Toronto Metropolitan University, a “performative male” contest recently drew a sizeable crowd by poking fun at this new TikTok archetype of masculinity. “Performative man” is a new Gen Z term describing young men who deliberately craft a soft, sensitive, emotionally aware aesthetic, signalling the rejection of “toxic masculinity.”

At “performative male” contests, participants compete for laughs and for women’s attention by reciting poetry, showing off thrifted fashion or handing out feminine hygiene products to show they’re one of the “good” guys.

Similar events have been held from San Francisco to London, capturing a wider shift in how Gen Z navigates gender. Research shows that young men are experimenting with gender online, but audiences often respond with humour or skepticism.

This raises an important question: in a moment when “toxic masculinity” is being called out, why do public responses to softer versions of masculinity shift between curiosity, irony and judgment?

Why Gen Z calls it “performative”

Gen Z’s suspicions toward these men may be partially due to broader shifts in online culture.

As research on social media shows, younger users value authenticity as a sign of trust. If millennials perfected the “curated self” of filtered selfies and highlight reels, Gen Z has made a virtue of realness and spontaneity.

Studies of TikTok culture find that many users share and consume more emotionally “raw” content that push against the more filtered aesthetics of Instagram.

Against this backdrop, the performative man stands out because he looks like he’s trying too hard to be sincere. The matcha latte, the film camera, the tote bag — these are products, not values. Deep, thoughtful people, the logic goes, shouldn’t have to announce it by carrying around a Moleskine notebook and a copy of The Bell Jar.

But as philosopher Judith Butler explained, all gender is “performative” in that it’s made real through repeated actions. Sociologists Candace West and Don Zimmerman call this “doing gender” — the everyday work we do to communicate we’re “men” or “women.”

This framing helps explain why the “performative man” can appear insincere, not because he’s fake, but because gender is always performed and policed, destined to look awkward before it seems “natural.”

On this end, the mockery of “performative men” acts as a way of keeping men in the “man box” — the narrow confines of acceptable masculinity. Studies show that from school to work, people judge men more harshly than women when they step outside gender norms. In this way, the mockery sends a message to all men that there are limits to how they can express themselves.

When progress still looks like privilege

However, many researchers caution that new masculine styles may still perpetuate male privilege.

In the post-#MeToo era, many men are rethinking what it means to be a man now that toxic masculinity has been critiqued. The calls for more “healthy masculinity” and positive male role models reveal a culture searching for new ways of being a man, yet also uncertain about what that would look like.

In this context, many public commentators argue these men are just rebranding themselves as self-aware, feminist-adjacent and “not like other guys” to seek better dating opportunities.

Sociologists Tristan Bridges and C.J. Pascoe would call this “hybrid masculinity” — a term that describes how privileged men consolidate status by adopting progressive or queer aesthetics to reap rewards and preserve their authority.

A 2022 content analysis of popular TikTok male creators found a similar pattern: many creators blurred gender boundaries through fashion and self-presentation yet reinforced norms of whiteness, muscularity and heterosexual desirability.

This echoes many critiques of performative men: they use the language of feminism and therapy without altering their approach to sharing space, attention or authority.

Can these small experiments matter?

Yet as sociologist Francine Deutsch argues in her theory of “undoing gender,” change often begins with partial, imperfect acts. Studies show that copying and experimenting with gender are key ways people learn new gender roles.

On the surface, there’s nothing inherently harmful about men getting into journaling, vinyl records or latte art.

In fact, youth and anti-radicalization research suggests these could be practical tools in countering online radicalization and isolation, another issue affecting young men.

What would change look like?

The truth is we may not yet have the tools to recognize change, given that much of our world is created to be shared and consumed on social media, and male dominance seems hard to change.

A positive sign is that, rather than being defensive, many male creators are leaning into the joke and using parody as a way to explore what a more sensitive man might look like.

And perhaps the “performative male” trend holds up a mirror to our own contradictions. We demand authenticity but consume performance; we beg men to change but critique them when they try; we ask for vulnerability yet recoil when it looks too forced.

The “performative male” may look ironic, but he’s also experimenting with what it means to be a man today.

Whether that experiment leads to lasting change or just another online trend remains unclear, but it’s a glimpse of how masculinity is being rewritten, latte by latte.

Jillian Sunderland has previously received funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Grant and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS) Award.

– ref. The rise of the ‘performative male:’ How young men are experimenting with masculinity online – https://theconversation.com/the-rise-of-the-performative-male-how-young-men-are-experimenting-with-masculinity-online-268742

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Daryl Janzen, Observatory Manager and Instructor, Astronomy, University of Saskatchewan

The nature of time has plagued thinkers for as long as we’ve tried to understand the world we live in. Intuitively, we know what time is, but try to explain it, and we end up tying our minds in knots.

St. Augustine of Hippo, a theologian whose writings influenced western philosophy, captured a paradoxical challenge in trying to articulate time more than 1,600 years ago:

“What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to a questioner, I do not know.”

Nearly a thousand years earlier, Heraclitus of Ephesus offered a penetrating insight. According to classical Greek philosopher Plato’s Cratylus:

“Heraclitus is supposed to say that all things are in motion and nothing at rest; he compares them to the stream of a river, and says that you cannot go into the same water twice.”

Superficially, this can sound like another paradox — how can something be the same river and yet not the same? But Heraclitus adds clarity, not confusion: the river — a thing that exists — continuously changes. While it is the same river, different waters flow by moment to moment.

While the river’s continuous flux makes this plain, the same is true of anything that exists — including the person stepping into the river. They remain the same person, but each moment they set foot in the river is distinct.

How can time feel so obvious, so woven into the fabric of our experience, and yet remain the bane of every thinker who has tried to explain it?

An issue of articulation

The key issue isn’t one most physicists would even consider relevant. Nor is it a challenge that philosophers have managed to resolve.

Time itself isn’t difficult to grasp: we all understand it, despite our persistent struggle to describe it. As Augustine sensed, the problem is one of articulation: a failure to precisely draw the right boundaries around the nature of time both conceptually and linguistically.

Specifically, physicists and philosophers tend to conflate what it means for something to exist and what it means for something to happen — treating occurrences as if they exist. Once that distinction is recognized, the fog clears and Augustine’s paradox dissolves.

The source of the issue

In basic logic, there are no true paradoxes, only deductions that rest on subtly mishandled premises.

Not long after Heraclitus tried to clarify time, Parmenides of Elea did the opposite. His deduction begins with a seemingly valid premise — “what is, is; and what is not, is not” — and then quietly smuggles in a crucial assumption. He claims the past is part of reality because it has been experienced, and the future must also belong to reality because we anticipate it.

Therefore, Parmenides concluded, both past and future are part of “what is,” and all of eternity must form a single continuous whole in which time is an illusion.

Parmenides’ pupil, Zeno, devised several paradoxes to support this view. In modern terms, Zeno would argue that if you tried walking from one end of a block to the other, you’d never get there. To walk a block, you must first walk half, then half of what remains, and so on — always halving the remaining distance, never reaching the end.

But of course you can walk all the way to the end of the block and beyond — so Zeno’s deduction is absurd. His fallacy lies in removing time from the picture and considering only successive spatial configurations. His shrinking distances are matched by shrinking time intervals, both becoming small in parallel.

Zeno implicitly fixes the overall time available for the motion — just as he fixes the distance — and the paradox appears only because time was removed. Restore time, and the contradiction disappears.

Parmenides makes a similar mistake when claiming that events in the past and future — things that have happened or that will happen — exist. That assumption is the problem: it is equivalent to the conclusion he wants to reach. His reasoning is circular, ending by restating his assumption — only in a way that sounds different and profound.

Space-time models

An event is something that happens at a precise location and time. In Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity, space-time is a four-dimensional model describing all such occurrences: each point is a particular event, and the continuous sequence of events associated with an object forms its worldline — its path through space and time.

But events don’t exist; they happen. When physicists and philosophers speak of space-time as something that exists, they’re treating events as existent things — the same subtle fallacy at the root of 25 centuries of confusion.

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Space-time doesn’t exist — but it’s a useful concept for understanding our reality

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Cosmology — the study of the whole universe — offers a clear resolution.

It describes a three-dimensional universe filled with stars, planets and galaxies that exist. And in the course of that existence, the locations of every particle at every instance are individual space-time events. As the universe exists, the events that happen moment by moment trace out worldlines in four-dimensional space-time — a geometric representation of everything that happens during that course of existence; a useful model, though not an existent thing.

The resolution

Resolving Augustine’s paradox — that time is something we innately understand but cannot describe — is simple once the source of confusion is identified.

Events — things that happen or occur — are not things that exist. Each time you step into the river is a unique event. It happens in the course of your existence and the river’s. You and the river exist; the moment you step into it happens.

Philosophers have agonized over time-travel paradoxes for more than a century, yet the basic concept rests on the same subtle error — something science fiction writer H.G. Wells introduced in the opening of The Time Machine.

In presenting his idea, the Time Traveller glides from describing three-dimensional objects, to objects that exist, to moments along a worldline — and finally to treating the worldline as something that exists.

That final step is precisely the moment the map is mistaken for the territory. Once the worldline, or indeed space-time, is imagined to exist, what’s to stop us from imagining that a traveller could move throughout it?

Occurrence and existence are two fundamentally distinct aspects of time: each essential to understanding it fully, but never to be conflated with the other.

Speaking and thinking of occurrences as things that exist has been the root of our confusion about time for millennia. Now consider time in light of this distinction. Think about the existing things around you, the familiar time-travel stories and the physics of space-time itself.

Once you recognize ours as an existing three-dimensional universe, full of existing things, and that events happen each moment in the course of that cosmic existence — mapping to space-time without being reality — everything aligns. Augustine’s paradox dissolves: time is no longer mysterious once occurrence and existence are separated.

Daryl Janzen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Physicists and philosophers have long struggled to understand the nature of time: Here’s why – https://theconversation.com/physicists-and-philosophers-have-long-struggled-to-understand-the-nature-of-time-heres-why-269762