This Dismal Season

Sorry. I asked around. Couldn't find anyone who bothered watching last night's leaders' debate. Not one. I suppose it has something to do with that "none of the above" attitude that permeates the general election this year.

All but two were university grads, the sort who usually pay some heed to these things if only for coffee or dinner conversations. Not this year, sorry.

I'm told some of those I asked simply missed it. The timing was awkward. You might settle down at 9 o'clock to watch the fireworks but, on the coast, you have other things to do - fixing dinner for example or just getting home through rush hour traffic, that sort of thing. One woman told me that she had it on her car radio but it was all gibberish as they talked over each other so she lost interest.

I see that Trudeau's most obsessive attacker was left quite tumescent but, again, so what?

What does it say when we're witnessing the Clash of Titans - a stammering school marm versus a summer-help counter clerk. I've never seen the like of it and I do go back a ways. There's something that is just so dismal about this election. Sort of like trying to mend a flat tire with four puncture wounds. You know very little good will come of it.

It's a pity really because there is so much at stake in this election including the fate of our youngest people and the generations to follow them. Time is running out and this time, four years hence, will probably be too late for Canada to change course.  Too little, too late.

This brings to mind Gary Mason's column in the Globe in late September where he contrasted Mulroney's brilliant effort to 'fix' the seriously damaged Ozone hole to the endless greenwash we're getting today on climate change.

...Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau said at a town hall event in Peterborough in January, 2017, that while he couldn’t shut down the oil sands immediately, “we need to phase them out, we need to manage the transition off of our dependence on fossil fuels.” It should not have been a controversial statement because it’s true. And yet, politicians in Alberta (and many citizens, too) lost their minds, accusing the Mr. Trudeau of betraying them, of forging a plan to rob thousands of people of their livelihoods. A few days later, Mr. Trudeau tried to undo the damage, saying that he “misspoke” – the oil sands would not be going anywhere soon, he assured Canadians.

Mason offers four reasons not to swallow the green smoothie voters are being force fed in this campaign.

First, neither of the two parties who will form government when the votes are tallied has a coherent plan to cut emissions enough in the limited time remaining. The Liberals at least have a vague plan but it's aspirational at best. And haven't we heard this aspirational talk from Justin before?

Second is the "fire and fall back" approach to climate change in vogue today. They're not denying the affliction any more. Instead they've moved on to undermining the solutions.

It’s not just members of the public who are in denial, but politicians and the oil and gas industry as well. Everyone agrees there is a problem, but few are willing to accept the sour medicine it will take to do something about it.

Mason's third reason is the refusal of the oil and gas industry (bolstered by their political stooges) to accept that their industry's days are numbered - at least if we intend to see our society last a few more generations.

A recent piece in The New York Times by Christiana Figueres laid it out in stark detail. The life of many of the world’s oil and gas companies, in their current form, could be as little as five years in some cases, but no more than 30 even in the most optimistic scenarios, predicted Ms. Figueres, who was the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Markets have started to abandon many of these companies. Exxon Mobil was the last big oil giant remaining in the top 10 of the world’s most valuable companies – until it dropped out earlier this month for the first time.

We either cut our own throats or we end fossil fuels. It's what Hans Joachim Schellnhuber meant when he said at the 2015 Paris climate summit that our only hope was for an "induced implosion" of the fossil energy giants. Survival depends on our governments putting them down, blowing them up. We know that the highest carbon, most toxin laden fuels have to be left in the ground yet here we have a prime minister so ensnarled in cognitive dissonance as to believe there's a legitimate purpose for building a 60-year, high capacity bitumen pipeline squaring off against a counter-clerk who attacks him for not getting it built fast enough.

Mason's final source of despair is how deeply and angrily divided Canadians are, especially those rallying to the defence of the petro-economy. Even Dame Cathy "we must not harm the economy" McKenna now needs a bodyguard to protect her from the petro-thugs.

Jason Kenney, for one, has relied on often incendiary oratory to get supporters riled up against the Liberal government in Ottawa, which he blames for trying to kill the oil industry. (Even though it bought a pipeline.) But a phalanx of conservative premiers has railed against the dangers of climate measures that will “kill the economy.” The doubt these politicians have sowed in the minds of the public may be having an effect. A recent survey by the firm Ipsos found nearly half of those polled thought scientists were elitists whose findings they discounted because they don’t align with their personal beliefs. Other polls have shown that people believe climate change is real but don’t want to sacrifice much to reverse its effects – a result no doubt influenced by the words of politicians who have convinced many Canadians that measures such as a carbon tax are a mere money grab that will have no measurable impact on GHG emissions.

Mason concludes by observing how quickly we praise Greta Thunberg and her good works and then, just as quickly, put all that out of our minds and, like moths, are drawn to the lanterns of Scheer and Trudeau.

This is a Potemkin campaign with everyone convincingly painted up to appear as someone or something that they're not. That's true of Scheer and Trudeau. It's also true of "late to the party" Jagmeet Singh who can't even get Rachel Notley to say she'll vote for him this time round. I've listened to Jagmeet and I'm convinced he's a very slick and opportunistic bullshitter, not that it's going to matter. Singh may have, pardon the term, found "Climate Jesus" but the New Dem rank and file haven't shown much sign they're with him.

So I will dutifully cast my ballot on October 21 but I don't think I'll waste my time watching the returns.  Maybe I'll dust off my Indiana Jones DVDs and make a night of it.

"A Globe-Spanning Murder-Suicide" I Guess That Sums It Up.

If you're planning on being around for another two or three decades you'll be witness to a world like you've never known it. What's in store for you is a darker, more dangerous and, ultimately, dystopian world as nature re-calibrates the biosphere. Talk about death by natural causes only on a civilizational scale.

We know there's still time, just barely, to avert the worst impacts of climate change and biodiversity collapse. We know what must be done, that's been clearly spelled out for us. We know what we must do but we're not going to do it.

Recently Bloomberg has reported that the Trudeau government is expected to give the go-ahead for the three-fold expansion of the Trans-Mountain pipeline next month. In a lovely companion piece yesterday, Bloomberg observed that "Even Trudeau's Canada Won't Rid Itself of Coal."

"Even Trudeau's Canada" what is that implying? That Justin Trudeau isn't totally in the bag for the fossil fuel industries - gas, oil, bitumen, coal. He's in it up to his eyeballs. That carbon tax nonsense, that's to make the rubes happy.

Petro-states are notorious liars and Canada is no exception whether it's ruled by Conservatives or Liberals. They're both profoundly dishonest. Both will sacrifice the future, perhaps irreparably, for the present. I'm sorry Liberals but that's true.

A recent article in New York Magazine spoke of a "globe-spanning murder-suicide" now underway.

Human beings are more prosperous and numerous than we’ve ever been, while the Earth’s other species are dying off faster than at any time in human history. 

These two conditions are related. But if the second one persists long enough, we will be following our fellow organisms into the dustbin of geological history.

...Climate change is a major driver of all this death, but burning fossil fuels is far from our species’ only method of mass ecocide. We are also harvesting fish populations faster than they can reproduce themselves, annually dumping upward of 300 million tons of heavy metals and toxic sludge into the oceans, introducing devastating diseases and invasive species into vulnerable environments as we send people and goods hurtling across the globe, and simply taking up too much space — about 75 percent of the Earth’s land, and 85 percent of its wetlands, have been severely altered or destroyed by human development.

Some day you may see prime ministers such as Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau for what are - monsters. By then it will be much too late to do anything about our collapsed ecosystems and the ravages of climate change. The windows of opportunity for dealing with these existential threats are fast closing and, if we were determined to act you would already know about it.

Some hyper-zealous Liberals are fond of extolling fine "Canadian values." Really, what values? We gave up on that decades ago when we succumbed to the embrace of the neoliberal order, something perpetuated today by Mr. Trudeau and almost certain to be continued by the winner of our general elections in October.  If life is not our priority, if the fate being dealt to future generations doesn't guide our planning and policy, our "Canadian values" are, in a word, shite.

A globe-spanning murder-suicide it will be then.  We had a choice. We made a choice. 

A Green Wave? No, But Possibly a Green Ripple.

It was just a by-election. Even if the governing party had an outside chance (it didn't, the Liberal brand out here rarely is competitive) voters "punish" the part in power in by-elections or so goes the claim.

This is generally reliable NDP territory. Up my way the Conservatives dominated for a while but this riding is also now held by the New Dems.

So perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that the Liberals came a dismal fourth in a seven candidate field.

It's hard to tell whether yesterday's release of the UN report on the looming biodiversity crisis had much impact on the voting but it couldn't have helped the mainstream parties much.

Then there's Trudeau's pipeline. I would love to think the Liberals' drubbing reflected a bit of that discord.

In a blatant display of electoral cowardice the Trudeau government has been tossing around the idea of withholding its decision on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion until after the general election in October. Hmm, I wonder what that's all about? Duh. For that perfidy alone the Liberals should be driven out of every riding in British Columbia.

Sorry, Grits, but your guy had his chance. We even fawned over him when he went surfing at Tofino. Sooo dishy. Only he turned into a dud. He's such a pale shadow of the Trudeau we knew and liked and, even those that didn't like him, respected. Hard to respect this guy with his patronizing speeches delivered in school marm style.

As for the NDP, well Jagmeet did chum the waters for his party's candidate. Even Maxime had his PPC lawn signs everywhere, often eclipsing all the other parties'. Far right lunacy doesn't sell too well out here.

What does this mean for my party, the Greens? It's a morale booster, for sure. It draws attention to the Greens as an alternative to what I call the "old school" parties and inspires hope for much greater gains in October. Too many still think of the Greens as a single-issue movement, a predictable lie spun by party hacks all too well steeped in prevarication.

For me, and I suspect plenty of others, that whole "strategic voting" ploy is over. Don't tell me that a vote for the Greens is a vote for Scheer. No it's a vote for the Greens. Slag the Greens as much as you like but look at yourself in the mirror first.

Instead of Whinging About Boomers, Explain Yourself.

Millennials and Gen-Xers are fond of blaming the Boomer generation for their woes. Cheap talk from people who vote for parties that keep the Canadian petro-state locked into fossil fuels. That means young-ish Conservative supporters, and young-ish Liberal supporters, their NDP counterparts to boot.

Don't complain about your condition, don't blame others, if you wish to support those who have delivered your fate.  The Liberals we Boomers supported are not the wet cardboard Liberals of today. We supported the Liberal Party of Laurier, St. Laurent, Pearson and Pierre Trudeau, not this sham of a party that now holds power.

So many of this new bunch like to brand themselves "progressives" but there's nothing remotely progressive in supporting those parties, not with the looming danger of plunging the world into catastrophic climate change just 12 years off.

What is progressive in a leader who lavishes solemn promises to win votes only to discard them, one by one, after he has succeeded in duping a hopeful public?

A broken promise is bad enough in private life. It is worse in the field of politics. No man is worth his salt in public life who makes on the stump a pledge which he does not keep after election; and, if he makes such a pledge and does not keep it, hunt him out of public life.

If there is one overarching progressive principle it is to improve the well being of the people, now and in the future. Wrapped up in that is the duty to leave the country a better place than you found it. Even Edmund Burke, the father of modern conservatism, espoused that much. So did this guy:

- Of conservation I shall speak more at length elsewhere. Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us. I ask nothing of the nation except that it so behave as each farmer here behaves with reference to his own children. That farmer is a poor creature who skins the land and leaves it worthless to his children. The farmer is a good farmer who, having enabled the land to support himself and to provide for the education of his children, leaves it to them a little better than he found it himself. I believe the same thing of a nation.

Of that generation of men to whom we owe so much, the man to whom we owe most is, of course, Lincoln. Part of our debt to him is because he forecast our present struggle and saw the way out. He said:"I hold that while man exists it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind."

It is inevitable in neoliberalism that the loyalty the elected owe those who put them in office, the voting public, is instead to various degrees given to others, powerful interests, special interests, the corporate sector - firms such as KPMG, SNC-Lavalin, any of the fossil fuel giants of Athabasca.

- For every special interest is entitled to justice, but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to representation in any public office. The Constitution guarantees protection to property, and we must make that promise good. But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation.

- The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need to is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise. We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows.

At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of freemen to gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will. At every stage, and under all circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highest possible value both to himself and to the commonwealth. 

"Job Churn" - carrying the burden of the special privileges of another beggars us all.  Morneau, the prime minister's very affluent finance minister, has the audacity to tell our people that we, and especially our children, will just have to accept a future of job churn, lifetime membership in the new precariat. Wealth for the few, insecurity and worse for most. That the man was brazen enough to say that and not be rebuked or contradicted by this man Trudeau, speaks volumes for this government's supposed progressive nature.

Practical equality of opportunity for all citizens, when we achieve it, will have two great results. First, every man will have a fair chance to make of himself all that in him lies; to reach the highest point to which his capacities, unassisted by special privilege of his own and unhampered by the special privilege of others, can carry him, and to get for himself and his family substantially what he has earned. Second, equality of opportunity means that the commonwealth will get from every citizen the highest service of which he is capable. No man who carries the burden of the special privileges of another can give to the commonwealth that service to which it is fairly entitled.

- No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar’s worth of service rendered-not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means.

- The right to regulate the use of wealth in the public interest is universally admitted. Let us admit also the right to regulate the terms and conditions of labor, which is the chief element of wealth, directly in the interest of the common good. The fundamental thing to do for every man is to give him a chance to reach a place in which he will make the greatest possible contribution to the public welfare.  ...No man can be a good citizen unless he has a wage more than sufficient to cover the bare cost of living, and hours of labor short enough so after his day’s work is done he will have time and energy to bear his share in the management of the community, to help in carrying the general load.

These passages capture the spirit of progressivism. This is not some Communist Manifesto. It is, instead, taken from a speech given by Teddy Roosevelt to a farmer's gathering in Osawatomie, Kansas in 1910. In this speech, Roosevelt drew heavily from the words of Abraham Lincoln.

The object of government is the welfare of the people. The material progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so long as they lead to the moral and material welfare of all good citizens. Just in proportion as the average man and woman are honest, capable of sound judgment and high ideals, active in public affairs,-but, first of all, sound in their home, and the father and mother of healthy children whom they bring up well,-just so far, and no farther, we may count our civilization a success. 

These passages are not an exhaustive compendium of progressive thought. They simply convey the focus and spirit of progressivism, once powerful influences that have long been purged from this modern politic and, by its absence, the decline of liberal democracy.

Simply being somewhat to the left of the Conservatives doesn't earn you the laurel of progressive. Being a progressive is about the relationship between government and the public, government and the individual, government and the corporate sector and other special interests. It is not compatible with the neoliberal order embraced on both sides of the aisle in our House of Commons.

The Liberal Party may be slightly, very slightly progressive socially but not to the extent that pries loose the grip of neoliberalism that pervades the party.

Don't sing the praises of those young people around the world striking for action on climate change if you intend to support the very politics they march against. You can't be on their side and work against them at the same time.

It's Getting Hot In Here

No, not the temperature, although that too is getting hot. I'm referring to the tenor of our social and political discourse. We're turning venomous, turning on each other. Society is degrading into camps, tribes.

We write off others, denounce them, vilify them and call them stupid childish names. We write them off at the very time when we most need to reach out and find common ground to restore and rebuild the framework of social cohesion.

When I began blogging about 10 years ago there was a marked difference between our side and the Tory camp. They were much quicker to pick up on the degeneracy of hyper-partisanship as it took hold in the United States. If you weren't in their camp you were a libtard or a lieberal or some equally puerile epithet. On their side it was constantly positing us, all of us, as their enemy. We might criticize their leaders but they had no hesitation in demeaning all of us. It was a shameful thing, a petty nastiness that they appeared to share with their American cousins.

Flash forward ten years and that same contagion of darkness has a foothold in our camp. The same hyper-partisanship, the same derogatory names, the same rage and hostility.  And so we have fallen lower. The thing is, this demeans us. The other side, they don't care. It merely validates their own view of irreconcilable and warring camps. We confirm what they want, even need, to believe about us to justify their own ugliness.

This is not a harmless indulgence by an intemperate few. It seeks to divide us, pull us ever further apart. Some quest to destroy a political party that predates Confederation and that still commands the support of more than 30 per cent of our fellow countrymen.

To those who boast about wanting to destroy the Conservative Party, what then? What do they want, a one-party state? Do they want their party in perpetual control of our country and our society? Do they really imagine their party is infallible or magically immune to corruption? It's not. Two years in and we've seen that this government has plenty of foibles and a good many failures. It has reneged on the critical promises that got it elected. It's a pretty face on some pretty shopworn politics.

The Trudeau Liberals, on the strength of some major promises they did not fulfill, got 39.5 per cent of the vote. 60.5 percent of the voting public supported other parties. By a 3 to 2 margin, the Canadian public was defeated in that election. Trump got a much better share of the popular vote in his country than Trudeau did in ours.

It is not disloyal, it is not aiding the enemy, to roundly criticize the Trudeau government for its grievous failings. It is not disloyal to expect far more and far better from the Liberals than we had to accept from the Harper Tories. Moreover it is not loyal to sit mute when our side strays and falters as the other side did.

I want to hear no more of this rabid nonsense about destroying the Conservative Party. This is stacking up to be a hellish century. We need social cohesion more than at any time in humanity's past. This is a time when we need to be reaching out, finding common ground, restoring consensus wherever that can be achieved. We will need to win them over, not alienate them and not create rifts among ourselves.

Cameron's Austerity Wins Britain a Credit Downgrade

It's not like Britain's Conservatives weren't warned their austerity platform would bludgeon their nation's economy.  Still, David Cameron didn't have to boast that keeping Britain's AAA credit rating intact would by the real test of his economic and political credibility.

Oopsie.

Britain's credit rating has now been dropped from AAA to Aa1 by the ratings agency, Moody's.   And the Tories, predictably, have vowed to stay the course since that seems to be working so well.

Chancellor George Osborne said the government would continue taking "tough measures" to deal with the deficit.

Mr Osborne said the decision was "a stark reminder of the debt problems facing our country" and did not mean the government should change course.