Michael Byers (Canadian author)
Past guests include Noam Chomsky, Louise Arbour, Conrad Black, Andrew Coyne, Amy Goodman, Chantal Hebert, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben and David Suzuki.
In February 2004, as Director of Duke University's Center for Canadian Studies, Byers hosted Jack Layton in Durham, North Carolina.
[7] During the campaign, Byers was sharply critical of the Harper government's supposed militarization of the Arctic; he also advocated a negotiation with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
At a candidates' debate at the end of September 2008, Byers made the controversial statement that the Alberta tar sands needed to be shut down "to address the global climate crisis".
The Liberal and Green candidates claimed that this position contradicted the official NDP platform, while Byers believed that it was covered by already passed legislation calling on Canada to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.
Byers agreed with a 2010 report prepared for the Senate of Canada that Canadian Coast Guard vessels patrolling the Arctic should be armed, stating, the "quiet authority of a deck-mounted gun" is not a provocation.
Byers also quoted a leaked US diplomatic cable that reported that Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper believed that relations with Russia in the Arctic were good and would not lead to war.
Also on December 28, 2011, Al Jazeera published an article by Byers entitled "The dragon looks north", about China's recent exploration efforts in the Arctic.
Byers was involved in the 1998–1999 extradition case concerning former Chilean military ruler Augusto Pinochet in the British House of Lords, working with Ian Brownlie QC and members of a legal team representing Amnesty International and other human rights organizations.
[24] Byers has been involved in the issue of Afghan detainees since January 2002, when he wrote the first widely read op-ed article about Guantanamo Bay detention camp, which was published in The Guardian newspaper.
[25] In September 2005, Byers wrote an article in The Globe and Mail newspaper questioning the legality of Canadian troops transferring Afghan detainees to US custody.
The $1.6 million project examined the nexus between climate change policy and social justice, with British Columbia serving as a case study for these issues of global consequence.
[33] Byers has written a number of op-ed articles on space issues, including a piece in the Washington Post entitled "Elon Musk, President of Mars?"
In 2017, Byers and his teenage son Cameron published an article in the journal Polar Record entitled "Toxic Splash: Russian rocket stages dropped in Arctic waters raise health, environmental and legal concerns".
International Law, Astrophysics, and the Sustainable Development of Space The book was published “open access” by Cambridge University Press Byers wrote several op-ed articles for the Globe and Mail newspaper that resulted in his being added to Russia’s sanctions list.
On March 3, 2022, just ten days after the invasion of Ukraine, he assessed early reports of the Russian military’s actions against the rules of international humanitarian law to ask whether President Vladimir Putin is a war criminal.
[37] In November 2022, he wrote about how the targeting of power plants and transformers across Ukrainian territory likely amounted to a crime against humanity because it deliberately put millions of civilians at risk of hypothermia, contaminated water supplies, and delays in medical care and emergency response.
[38] In March 2023, he wrote about how an arrest warrant for Putin, issued by the International Criminal Court, would likely cause China to hold back on the provision of weapons and other support.
Byers was an accomplished middle-distance runner in his youth, representing Canada at the Junior (<19) and Espoir (<23) levels before a serious injury prompted him to focus on academics.
