More Sounds of Silence

In an earlier column I suggested that most politicians in this election campaign are unwilling to address the fatal flaws of our current economic structure. But the sounds of silence rumble on far beyond concerns related to the economy.

Who, for example, is giving more than lip-service to the global Peak Oil phenomenon? It is clear to most of us that the age of cheap and easy oil is over. We now drill four or five miles beneath a mile of water to try to find what oil is left. Or we rip up our boreal forests to get at the bitumen that lies below. We even devote increasingly large shares of croplands to produce ethanol or bio-diesel.

Why is no one casting a new vision related to energy use in the future? Who will stand up and say that we need to reduce our energy consumption and that much of that energy will need to come from renewable sources? Who is willing to talk about what rising fossil fuel prices will mean for the future of agriculture and the cost of food? Who can look food shortages and massive global starvation in the face and talk to us intelligently about ways to mitigate suffering? Silence. Mostly silence.

There seems to be a fair bit of attention in the election campaign about support for the middle class in our nation. It has long been an assumption that for a democracy to function well it needs a large middle class that wants to get involved in civil society. Has anyone noticed that our Canadian middle class is shrinking? That the wealth of our nation is flowing upward toward the super-rich, more so than downward toward the disenfranchised? Will someone please stand up for justice? I hear only a faint response. Mostly silence.

And what about our environment – the habitat we call home? Around the world, there is an emerging consensus that our global eco-system is in trouble. Different voices express differing concerns but all speak of an approaching tipping point beyond which it will be very difficult to restore any semblance of environmental integrity. Who is looking out to ensure that the thousands of chemicals in use today will not harm us? Or that our processed foods are in fact healthy for our families? Who will take responsibility for finding safe and permanent homes for spent nuclear fuel? There is an endless list of concerns. Any sound on the campaign trail? Mostly the sound of silence.

As Murray Dobbins notes in one of his recent articles: Our institutions are failing us in anticipating the consequences of the various catastrophes we actually know are coming. At some level it is simply a failure of the imagination. Our institutions have not been designed to create a response to something the world has never seen before.

Hence, only the sounds of silence on the campaign trail when it comes to things that really matter to us in the long run.

Jack Heppner

Sounds of Silence

As the rhetoric heats up in the present election campaign, I am struck by the sounds of silence around issues that really matter.

There is a need to address issues of substance relating to the viability of our lifestyles – actions we need to take now to ensure a more sustainable future. Instead we hear about short-term fixes to the economy. And most often the banter is fear-based. That is, if we don’t find the right formula our economy will shrink. Horrors!

How is it that the Economy has become king in terms of our social discourse? There was a time when the political question was how the economy could serve society. Now it seems that the most important question is what we can and must do to keep the economy going. As David Suzuki says, we have come to worship our Economy above all other gods.

The Economy has been given a life of its own. John McMurty describes it as follows: “Players in the global capitalist order, transnational corporations and the global financial institutions, have managed to separate themselves from the rest of society, radically decreasing their responsibilities. The ideology supporting this de-coupling from society was developed in parallel and effectively places the abstract “economy” on a pedestal above any other social institution - whether government, community, family or individual.”

The “doctrines” of this all-encompassing Economy are more or less as follows: In order to be healthy, any economy must grow at least two or three percent a year. Citizens must be re-designated as “consumers” and encouraged to buy more and more stuff. The Gross Domestic Product of a country is the best indicator of societal health. And, if you really want to make it big, find ways of making money from money rather than from productive activity.

These prominent doctrines raise a lot of flags which we need to think about. But given the holy status of our Economy, these are concerns that any political party wanting to win an election can ill afford to raise.

What politician would raise the concern that our preoccupation with economic growth might kill us in the end? That unlimited growth is simply unsustainable? An economy growing at 2.5% annually will double its output in about thirty years. Given our limited natural resources, will we not soon have to consider zero growth as the standard?

What political party will try to convince us that buying more stuff won’t bring us more happiness and that it will strangle us in the end? There is empirical evidence that beyond having our basic needs met, happiness and a sense of well-being does not increase significantly with increased wealth. Consumerism is not all it is cracked up to be.

And who on the election trail will alert us to the fact that making money from money, instead of sustainable productivity, represents a house of cards that will ultimately collapse?

We might be surprised how far we could go as a society if we stopped bending the knee to the almighty Economy.

Jack Heppner

Energy and the Environment in the Current Federal Election

With few exceptions, the current federal election campaign has been devoid of discussions about energy and environment policy. None of the major political parties has raised energy policy as an issue.

This is disappointing, because there can be no doubt that we will soon be forced to live with energy significantly more expensive than it is now. The sooner we begin to adjust to an expensive energy environment, the better off we will be on the long run. Furthermore, given human technological capacity, we humans now have the ability, as never before, to impact our entire habitat, including our climate. To live on the presumption that our activity has no effect on climate involves a monumental risk, and is not fair to future generations.

However, none of the politicians are addressing these concerns. Why the silence? Is it because in the last election, the Liberals under Stephan Dion made this an election issue, and they were thoroughly trounced? Perhaps.

But the South Eastman Transition Initiative coalesces precisely around these issues. In order to highlight these issues, we sent a questionnaire to each of the Provencher candidates asking for responses to four questions. We received replies from five of the six candidates. Unfortunately, the Conservative Party candidate chose not to respond.

These are the questions we put to the candidates:
1. Do you believe that we have reached peak oil or are about to?
2. Do you believe human induced climate change is happening?
3. Do you believe that peak phosphate is here or near?
4. Do you believe it is appropriate to produce bio-fuels with food to supply our energy needs?

The Pirate Party is a single-issue party, and the party platform does not speak to environmental and energy issues. However, Ric Lim, the local candidate shared his personal opinions. He is somewhat equivocal on all of our questions, but does not think a belief in peak oil, climate change or peak phosphate is a precondition to dealing with our resources more responsibly. He strongly advocates for cleaner energy alternatives to carbon based fuel and the recycling of the phosphate in sewage. He is uneasy about the competition between food crops and biofuel crops.

David Reimer of the Christian Heritage Party is of the opinion that peak oil is not an issue and that human activity is not affecting the climate. In this he reflects what the party website says, which vigorously denies global warming. The CHP believes we need to address particulate air pollution, water pollution and soil pollution. Reimer recognizes the need for alternative fuels and the need for research and development into finding such a fuel. He is cautious about the use of bio-fuels because the production of bio-fuels will probably reduce the supply of food. He believes that peak phosphate is near and that a governmental strategy of better education is needed to deal with this problem.

Terry Haywood, the Liberal Candidate, did not answer our questions but referred us to the Liberal Party platform. The Liberal Party election platform consists of five planks, and a clean environment is one of them. A major part of their environmental strategy has to do with more stringent regulation of oil extraction and transportation. It recognizes that Canada does not have a clear strategy on many aspects of energy use and proposes that this be addressed. The Liberals will establish a cap and trade system to reduce greenhouse gases, end tax breaks to the oil industry and move to greater regulation of oil sands development. The Liberals say they will not wait for US leadership in matters of carbon pricing and other energy related initiatives. The current election platform does not mention the carbon tax that was part of the Liberal platform in the last election.

Al Mackling of the NDP gave a minimal response to our questions. The NDP election platform has seven planks, and Tackle Climate Change is one of them. They would put a price on carbon through a cap and trade system, end subsidies to the oil and gas industry, and provide incentives for the development of renewable energy. The revenues collected through the cap and trade system would be redirected as subsidies to encourage cleaner energy production. They believe Canada can become a world leader in renewable energy.

Janine Gibson of the Green Party gave the most comprehensive response to our questions. Gibson believes peak oil, climate change and peak phosphate are real. She is strongly opposed to the use of agricultural produce for the production of biofuels. Janine has made a lifestyle choice to live in a way that minimizes her dependence on fossil fuels, and is actively engaged in promoting organic food production and sustainable life styles. The Green Party platform advocates revenue neutral carbon pricing and an early end to subsidies to the nuclear and fossil fuel industries. This would be combined with incentives for the development of cleaner technologies. Janine is unique among the candidates in that she is calling for a simpler lifestyle in order to share more equitably the world’s limited resources.

Vic Toews of the Conservative Party chose not to respond to our questions. The Conservative Election platform consists of seven planks. Environmental care is not one of them. Any environmental or energy policy comes as a sub-point under other headings. There is no suggestion in the election platform that any Conservative policies with respect to energy and the environment will change. They are committed to maintaining a tandem relationship with the US with respect to relevant policy and remain of the opinion that Canada made a significant contribution at the Copenhagen meetings. There will be some incentives to develop more energy saving technologies.

We recognize that the questions we raise do not have simple answers, and that they cannot be adequately dealt with in a short survey. We invite you to our web site for a more complete report on the survey. There you will find the complete response of each candidate, and a link to each of the party web sites.

In our view it is unlikely that the issues that are going to have the greatest affect on our quality of life in the future, namely peak oil, climate change, peak phosphate and biofuel policy will be dealt with more comprehensively by our government as a result of this election. The Green Party takes a different approach to these issues than any of the other parties, but given our current electoral system, it is unlikely that they will play a significant role in Ottawa. Nevertheless we need to live responsibly if we are to pass a reasonable habitat on to our children and grandchildren. To do this effectively, we need government leadership, but in the absence of that, there are things we can do. Join us at the South Eastman Transition Initiative to explore possibilities further. More at http://www.southeasttransition.com/

Eric Rempel

Why Lawns?

Culture is an insidious thing. Culture is life giving in the sense that it helps us find a place to belong. It gives us a sense that we are where we belong. But culture can also be destructive, as when our culture expects us to do things that ultimately contribute to the destruction of our habitat.

Take one of our cultural icons: THE LAWN. We deliberately set our houses well back on our lots so there will be room for a lawn, and we expect our lawns to meet certain very precise standards. It needs to look “healthy”, but ironically, healthy in this context means that it is and looks different than anything ever found in nature. This “healthy” lawn, if neglected by humans for a little more than a week, begins to look unhealthy. So we create an artificial ‘normal’ for our lawns, and redefine the word “healthy” to describe that look.

And nuturing that “healthy lawn” contributes to the destruction of our habitat. Note:
• This lawn needs nitrogen fertilizer. This fertilizer is derived from natural gas, a limited resource, that surely ought to be preserved for other more important purposes. Also to satisfy our notion of a “healthy” lawn, it is imperative that more nitrogen be applied than the grass will use up, which means there will be nitrogen runoff, fouling our water ways.
• This lawn needs phosphate fertilizer. This fertilizer too is in limited supply, and the readily available deposits are used up. The fertilizer we have needs to be saved for food production. Again to achieve our ideal, more phosphate needs to be applied than the lawn can use, so there will be nutrient runoff – and fouled water ways.
• Clippings need to be removed. They fill up our landfills (unless of course they are composted).
• This lawn needs herbicides. Herbicides are chemical products used to kill plants we don’t want. Farmers use them to remove weeds from their fields, the US military uses them to defoliate forested areas so enemy soldiers cannot hide there, and we use them to keep our lawns “healthy”. The question is, how confident can we be that these chemicals do only what we want them to, and don’t have any negative side effect? What is the effect of repeated use of these chemicals? Are we OK with risking our children’s health so we can have a dandelion free lawn?

Dr. June Irwin, a Quebec dermatologist became convinced there was a link between the skin rashes she was seeing and exposure to lawn-care chemicals. In the end she succeeded in convincing the city council that the use of herbicides for cosmetic purposes was not in the town’s interest. This resulted in a ban on the use of those products in that city, a ban that has spread to many other cities. Her story is told in the movie A Chemical Reaction.

Eric Rempel

Downsizing for Resilience

Already back in 1976, Maxine Hancock wrote a book entitled, Living on Less and Liking it More. She eloquently made the case that the quality of one’s life is not dependent upon acquiring more stuff, but rather in modest living, sharing good things and looking out for one another.

That same year, Gary Becker published The Economic Approach to Human Behavior.  In his book he sought to prove that all human behavior is guided by the same self-centered greed that underlies economic capitalism. For this discovery, Becker received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1992. In other words, the brightest minds on the planet agreed that selfishness is what makes the world go round. That people only practice generosity if that somehow serves their self-interest.

I think Becker has had more influence on how people live today than has Hancock. And the consequences are stark: Greater degrees of injustice. Deterioration in political discourse and stability. More unhappiness. And a huge strain on environmental integrity.

But the good news is that many studies since 1976 have proven Hancock to be at least as realistic about human nature and potential as Becker. Although the degree of cooperation varies widely, all the studies show that in no cultures do people behave 100 percent selfishly. And, furthermore, studies in neuroscience have proven that humans have  “…in-built desires for altruism and fairness as well as selfishness and avarice.” Different areas of the brain “light up” when in the process of grasping for one’s self or sharing with others.

From a faith perspective, it is right after all then, to assert that all humans carry the image of God within them. Another way of saying it is that underneath the veneer of selfishness we have come to expect from one another, there lies a more cooperative spirit than we had thought. We have all experienced how such virtue surfaces in the context of emergencies like natural disasters.

This brings me to my point about downsizing for resilience. One way to tackle the ecological crisis facing our planet is to look for alternative sources of energy and materials to satisfy our needs at present levels of consumption. Another is to downsize our expectations on a broad front. And in order to accomplish this we can appeal to those deeper levels of altruism and fairness in people that often lie hidden behind a façade of selfishness and greed we have come to expect.

If those of us in the overprivileged world begin to understand the human and environmental holocaust that is unfolding around the world we can find it in our hearts to downsize for the sake of a little more justice, peace and environmental protection. Downsizing will not look the same for everyone. But if we are serious about it, we can find ways to downsize our homes, travel plans and our need for ever-more stuff. And in the process we will discover that we can live on less and like it more.

Jack Heppner