It's the Sound of Cracking Ice

Growing up in Ontario back when it used to have winters, young boys gravitated to frozen ponds, streams and lakes.  We'd skate or play hockey or sometimes just marvel at walking across expanses of frozen water.   One sound that instantly commanded everyone's attention was the sharp crack that signified shifting, perhaps even breaking ice.

I think I'm hearing that sharp cracking sound again.  The truth is I've been expecting it, wondering "when" not "if."   This time it's not ice that's cracking but complacency and submission and acquiescence.   What is breaking is the mantle on which a mountain of inequality has been built even at the cost of the health of the environment itself and the mutilated future of millions, probably billions of people around the world.

I knew the moment would come, it had to.  It is absolutely inevitable.   It is the hellspawn that emerges from the incestuous coupling of the unstoppable and the unsustainable.   This is the candle fiercely ablaze from both ends.

What has been puzzling has been our refusal to see this coming.   We seemingly sought security where none was to be found by compelling ourselves to look the other way.   We opted for a false sense of security rather than reach for the real thing.

This sound we're hearing even comes with its own awkward name, "Occupy Wall Street."  OWS, as pointed out by Naomi Klein and others, isn't really a protest but something far greater - it's a movement that seeks not merely to object but to demand change, a new order, new values and rules to serve mankind in the 21st century, not to defy the 21st century.

This may sound like a mighty bold prediction, a real longshot, but it's not.   What is beginning is a process as essential to life as breathing.  If we as a civilization are to keep breathing we have no choice but to abandon 18th century economics, 19th century industrialism and 20th century geopolitics, the very models that have propelled us to the edge of this abyss.

We need new models crafted to adapt to reality.   The first of these, the governing reality is that we live on a finite planet within a very finite biosphere.   The second reality is that whatever economic, political and social models we devise must operate sustainably within the scope of the governing reality.   This is not revolutionary, merely rational.

We can no longer rev our economic engine past the red line.   That engine is about to blow.   We need to replace the component we removed to go faster - posterity.   We need posterity - regard for the future, for generations yet unborn - we need it badly and we need to give it priority in our policy decision making.   Posterity is the governor that keeps the engine from destructively over-revving.  If your priority is to provide for the future as well as the present, you ratchet back the throttle.

To abuse a line from Mackenzie King, revolution if necessary but not necessarily revolution.  Indeed, as we're already seeing in the Arab world and elsewhere, the 21st is already emerging as the Century of Revolution.   Canada is not Tunisia or Syria or even the United States.  If we are wise, if we make the right decisions, if we act in time, this troubling century will go far easier on us than just about any other place on earth.  If we turn our back on change, if we yield the initiative and dig in our heels, this century could be much harder on us and those who will follow.

A Pox On All Their Houses

With some regret I concluded before the last election that there was not a national party or national party leader even remotely worth supporting.  They were all, including the polished turd who now camps out in Stornoway, a bunch of dead-enders unwilling to come to grips with the real issues of the day, fixed in 20th century politics and thereby left with no vision whatever for the 21st.

A reader of this blog recently drew my attention to an article chronicling how today's governorship has become incapable of leading, preferring to simply ignore the pressing problems of the day.  How true.   There's no courageous vision to be had on Parliament Hill.

My post yesterday noted that 17 Nobel Laureates, constituting the Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability, warned that "unsustainable patterns of production, consumption and population growth" were imperiling mankind and most other life on our planet.   They emphasized that man absolutely must stop the growth of carbon emissions by no later than 2015 - just four years hence.  Reading their injunctions and then looking at the leadership of our Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats - it was simply too much.

Warnings abound.   Even the World Bank is sounding the alarm.  It reported that, worldwide, major flooding events have tripled over the past three decades.  A threefold increase in just three decades.  And the bank didn't pull any punches on what was causing this either - "human caused climate change."

If you still don't get it, throw on your chest waders and head to Manitoba.  Go a day's drive West and help put out wildfires in Alberta.   Or take a meandering drive through central British Columbia and marvel at how our rich, green forests have turned a lovely shade of rust.

So, how does any of this resonate on Parliament Hill?  Who is sounding the call to arms?  No one.  They can't and for good reason.   They're all stuck in the "growth and jobs" paradigm.   They still view the world through scratchy old 20th century glasses.  They can't meet challenges they prefer not to see.  They're comfortable enough with chicken scratch politics.  They're content to meander the farmyard, scratching the surface in the hunt for an overlooked bit of grain or seed.

20th century politics holds no answers for us in the 21st.  Even the brightest minds at the Pentagon understand this.  Check out this paper, from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, "A National Strategic Narrative."

The assumptions of the 20th century, of the U.S. as a bulwark first against fascism and then against communism, make little sense in a world in which World War II and its aftermath is as distant to young generations today as the War of 1870 was to the men who designed the United Nations and the international order in the late 1940s.

Consider the description of the U.S. president as “the leader of the free world,” a phrase that encapsulated U.S. power and the structure of the global order for decades. Yet anyone under thirty today, a majority of the world’s population, likely has no idea what it means.

The authors explain that the world has passed from the closed system of the 20th century into an open system for the 21st.

[The] strategy of containment was designed for a closed system, in which we
assumed that we could control events through deterrence, defense, and dominance of the international system. The 21st century is an open system, in which unpredictable external events/phenomena are constantly disturbing and disrupting the system. In this world control is impossible; the best we can do is to build credible influence – the ability to shape and guide global trends in the direction that serves our values and interests (prosperity and security) within
an interdependent strategic ecosystem. In other words, the U.S. should stop trying to dominate and direct global events. The best we can do is to build our capital so that we can influence events as they arise.

It's a good read if only to show that 20th century strategies and pursuits will avail us little in the 21st.  That holds true for security, geopolitics, economics and environmental challenges.

What does the "vision" that I find so lacking in Canadian political leadership look like?  That's easy.  It looks like the honest, open and forthright policies introduced by Labour and reinforced by Britain's current Conservative government.  Our leaders, the lot of them, instead shirk their responsibility to do at least as much for Canadians as British governments are doing for their citizens.

If the Liberal Party sincerely wishes to rebuild, to redeem its credibility, this is where they can do it.  Take up this challenge, make it their own.  Shape a vision of government for Canada in the 21st century.  Leave these putzes to wallow in the last century.  The crises and challenges are building.   They're not going away.  Canada won't be immune to them either.  If you accept those truths, you're well on the way to charting a path for a Liberal renaissance.  If not, you deserve your demise.