Canada, Climate Emergency and Economic Cataclysm: A Proposed Response In Brief

 

Or,

On Trolls and Concision, Sound-Bite Culture, and The Importance of Thinking For Yourself

(Please see my recent essay, titled, Canada, eh?, for part one of this present meditation)

The following issues require immediate, urgent attention, thought and action, proritized in the highest degree by all levels of society, as a growing number of people well know. Millions of people and thousands of organizations are doing great things in myriad ways. There is good reason for hope, and always good reason for empowerment and bold action. At the same time, the big picture remans stark. Currently we are not dealing with the rapidly escalating confluence of intertwined economic, social, political and ecological crises in anything that is remotely adequate to the task at hand.

We will be forced to face these issues within twenty years, and more likely, in less than a decade, if not sooner. Why not deal with reality now? Things almost always go better when we respond early, rather than waiting until we are forced to act, when things have gone from bad to disastrous.

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We must start with re-examining the fundamentals, or we will get nowhere, except where we are already heading.

Reading is something that needs to become hip, cool, and widespread – that is the beginning of an important constellation of reflection and thought, I would contend. Reading is critically important – almost as important as oral culture, and telling and truly listening to each others’ stories. By that I mean serious reading, of course, and not just reading for entertainment, which is also valuable and wonderful.

Reflection must go with reading and sharing our stories. Reflection is even more urgently needed. That, in turn, requires solitude and quiet be embraced, at least for part of every year, every lifetime, and ideally every day.

Dialogue, debate or discussion, is also critical. We need to read, reflect, share our stories and truly listen; and we need to discuss our thoughts, views, ideas and experiences, on topics ranging from the personal, to issues of our communities, our nations, and our world.

For dialogue or discourse to most most fruitful, we need to be frank, open and honest, confident yet humble, respectful, friendly, warm, open-minded, and willing and able to both speak and to listen. We do not always reach that ideal, as we all know. We strive, if we are sensible, for such an ideal.

We strive to halt and reverse the modern plague of mass alienation combined with mass narcissistic regression to a highly neurotic infantile state.

But even when discourse is thorny, and far from ideal, we can learn a great deal. It is true that reading, reflection, writing, and discussion can all clarify thought and sharpen the mind. Conflict, if handled well, can do the same.

So, thank you to the trolls, I say: your cantankerous, petty, infantile obnoxiousness can spell blessings in disguise.

Thankfully “comments” from trolls are no more than 5% of the responses I get, and usually less. Most people interact like civil, respectful, thoughtful adults. Trolls do not.

Maybe that is the best definition of troll-like behaviour: internet or other mediated, socially-distanced, alienated social activity which displays a marked lack of civility, courtesy, respect, or maturity, and tends to sound like the temper tantrum of a small (neurotic) child.

When I write an article, I try to keep it concise, to accomodate for the fact that most people now have drastically shortened attention spans (thanks to the glorious panacea of the internet and TV) along with chronic undiagnosed hyperactivity – both of which are pandemic in modern 21st century society – and very little ability to take in anything longer than 400-500 words: which is already an extreme stretch for most people. (And even that limit I have a hard time limiting myself to. This essay is 1600 words. Yikes! Scary!)

Given that the subjects I general deal with are complex social, ecological and political-economic issues, requiring in-depth analysis, along with interdisciplinary systems analysis, as well as in-depth philosophical reflection; going into any depth, while preserving breadth and clarity of overview, and also concision for the mass culture of pandemic global ADHD, obviously requires a focus on major patterns, and an omission of many details. It clearly becomes impossible to spell out every detail of either an analysis or a proposed response to an issue, if, that is, both concision for general approachability as well as depth and breadth, are to be maintained. (It is amazing that certain obvious things must be explained.)

What is expected is that readers will think for themselves, investigate things for themselves, and think through the implications and details which were not explicitly included or stated aloud. What is not expected is that readers must be spoon-fed every single detail, because they cannot possibly think for themselves. For most people, most readers, it is understood that not every detail is laid out in great explication. The reader assumes that just because a set of details have not been explicitly stated, that does not mean they have not been considered or are not implied. Not so with trolls. Trolls seem to have no brain. Or they act as if that is the case.

When I laid out a sketch for how Canadians might deal with just a couple of the crises we and our world face, including the growing economic, environmental, social and political crises, and the growing refugee crisis they also entail – in an esay titled, Canada, eh? – it was with the assumption that intelligent readers understand this is a mere sketch, not a detailed blueprint.

Again, trolls cannot distinguish such rudimentary concepts as “overview” vs “comprehensive, detailed plan”.

Amazing.

So, for the small-minded and addle-brained few, who tend, ironically, to be the ones most filled with self-righteous and pompous, pretentious venom and vitriol, let me spell out a few things which should gave been clear, implied, or otherwise not in need of explication or explicit elaboration.

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1. Who will build the homes and infrastructure for 37 million refugees, which I recommended be taken into Canada, as a minimum, between 2020 and 2030?

I did make that clearly implied, I thought: the refugees would be required to commit a portion of each year, for a specified period of time, devoted to community service and infrastructure work. I mentioned green home and energy efficiency building retrofits, a transnational solar-hydrogen highway, and a trans-Canada solar mag-lev high speed light rail coridor, as examples. What I thought would be clear from that, is that the building of (tiny, off-grid green) homes, and the minimal road infrastructure to support such refugee eco villages, would be provided by the refugees themselves. This to me seems both practical as well as fair.

2. Who pays for the homes and infrastructure for an additional 37 million refugees?

Firstly, the intelligent thing would not be to replicate our doomed and failed 20th century first world model. That would be insane.

What we need are clusters of off-grid, ultra-low cost, tiny green homes (tiny straw bale adobe earth integrated townhomes would be best), within the context of newly created small rural eco-villages, centred around largely food- water- and energy-self-reliant, small-scale organic farming and regenerative agriculture. That means the costs of housing construction and infrastructure are extremely low, relative to the failed norms that we still blindly and stubbornly adhere to in Canada, the US and the industrialized world. It also means the homes and infrastructure are ultra-low impact, while the communities as a whole are ecologically REGENERATIVE – they actually heal the planet. This is what is simply, urgently needed, in Canada and world-wide; and this is also, simply do-able, and entirely achievable – if we have the sanity to muster the will.

Secondly, I did say explicitly that the costs of bringing in 37 million refugees over the next ten years would be met by: a) raising corporate taxes back to 1980 levels, prior to 40 years of corporate tax cuts; and, b) by taxing pollution, and especially carbon emmissions. Between the two, there would be enough money and resources to fully fund social programs such as health care, education, child care, pharma care and pensions, along with environmental programs, parks, libraries, public transit and infrastructure repair, which have all been disastrously neglected over the past forty years of neoliberal corporate rule; and it would also be more than enough money and resources to rebuild our nation’s infrastructure to make it truly green, by using a volunteer army of refugee labour as a joint project of mutual aid.

3. Shouldn’t we Canadians get first dibs? Why don’t you give five acres to every Canadian!?

I said explicitly just that. We have the land. It is simply not being distributed justly, nor used ecologically or wisely. Give each Canadian five acres, yes. To claim that plot, volunteer community service time will be required, in energy efficiency building retrofit projects, and new green home and infrastructure creation.

Of course, for such a plan, or any plan or public policy framework, to be truly equitable or just, we must sit down with Native First Nations Peoples across the country to work out the concrete ways we will heal our world while respecting the rights of all peoples, including First Nations peoples, and further, giving due credence and receptivity to traditional knowledge, which will most likely be pivotal.

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Does anyone have a better plan for the fast-approaching Dust Bowl and Great Depression conditions, coming in 2021 or very soon after, as we face the combined hurricane force of economic collapse, social chaos, and a rapidly escalating environmental emergency? If someone has a better plan, that also deals with these stark, fast-approaching realities, I would like to see it.

The broad strategy laid out here should of course be one part of an overall national plan for building a vibrant, just, ecologically sound, peaceful, democratic and free society for the 21st century and beyond.

But even this component of a broader vision and plan, which I have sketched out only in overview in this and the preceding essay, would radically transform the country for the better. It would double the population over the span of a decade, and triple the number of municipalities in Canada, from roughly 3,500 to roughly 10,000, adding roughly 20-30 new communities per county across the country. It would go a long way toward an urgently needed decentralization and re-localization of our society; renewing rural areas and existing small towns, villages and cities in the process, and adding a powerful new set of voices advocating for rural communities and environmental stewardship and action. It would rapidly transition us from a fossil fuel addicted nation with enormous levels of energy waste and inefficiency, toward a much lower impact, energy efficient, energy conserving, post-carbon, post-fossil fuel society – while kick-starting the economy into a flourishing state, with high if not full employment. And it would accomplish all of this while profoundly aiding and empowering the majority of Canadians who are now struggling economically, and taking in 37 million refugees, or roughly ten million refugee families over the course of a decade.

I think that is a bold and innovative plan, or a major part of a vision I have laid out before, in my first two published books and 500 essays. I think we would be wise to consider it, and to act on it sooner than later, if not immediately.

Drastic measures will soon be needed. I am spelling out the broad oulines of a humane and practical response to that impending disaster, which is about to slam us in the face.

We can be bold and brave, and act now; or we can wait a while longer, for the stakes, and the disaster, to rise to exponentially higher levels. The sane response, would be to act now, and act boldly.

JTR,

August 19, 2020